Background:The microdosimetric quantity lineal energy and its mean values have proven useful for quantifying radiation quality in many situations. The ratio of dose-mean lineal energies is perhaps the simplest quantity for quantifying differences between two radiation qualities. However, published dose-mean lineal energy values from different codes may differ significantly with potential influence on radiation quality estimates. Purpose: The purpose was to compare dose-mean lineal energy values from different track-structure data sets for condensed water vapor and liquid water, and to evaluate the influence on radiation quality estimations for some photon sources. Methods: Published dose-mean lineal energy values for 0.1 keV to 1 MeV electrons in spheres with diameters 2 nm to 1 μm, calculated with water vapor and liquid water track structure codes and proximity functions, were collected, analyzed, and compared. Data for cylinders were converted to spheres using a theoretical transformation published by Kellerer. A new set of dose-mean lineal energy values was calculated to cover the whole range of volumes of interest here using the GEANT4-DNA code. The influence from the differences between codes on radiation quality calculations was estimated using dose-mean lineal energy ratios for the photon sources 125 I, 169 Yb, and 192 Ir relative to 60 Co. Results: The theoretical relation for converting the dose-mean lineal energy between different geometrical volumes, results in differences up to 10% between cylinders and spheres depending on electron energy and target size, in agreement with published simulated results. For spheres with diameter above 100 nm, dose-mean lineal energy values for condensed water vapor and liquid water are with few exceptions within ±10%. Below 100 nm, the difference increases with decreasing diameter reaching a factor of two at 2 nm. The values from water vapor codes are in general larger than from liquid water codes. If the dose-mean lineal energy ratio is based on condensed water vapor instead of liquid water, the ratio differs less than 9% for the nuclides 125 I, 169 Yb, and 192 Ir relative to 60 Co independent of the volume simulated. However, a specific value of the dose-mean lineal energy ratio, is found at a larger target diameter in liquid water than in condensed water vapor. Conclusions: When ratios of the dose-mean lineal energy are used as a measure of the radiation quality it is important to compare values for geometrically equal target shapes. A practical method of converting values for cylinders of equal diameter and height to spheres was demonstrated. Although dose-mean lineal energy values calculated with water vapor and liquid water codes may differ significantly, the radiation quality, in terms of ratios of dose-mean lineal 1286