This paper is concerned with the approximation of data using linear models for which there is additional information to be incorporated into the analysis. This situation arises, for example, in Tikhonov regularisation, model averaging, Bayesian inference and approximation with Gaussian process models. In a least-squares approximation process, the m-vector of data y is approximated by a linear function ŷ = Hy of the data, where H is an m × m matrix related to the observation matrix. The effective number of degrees of freedom associated with the model is given by the sum of the eigenvalues of H. For standard linear least-squares regression, the matrix H is a projection and has n eigenvalues equal to 1 and all others zero, where n is the number of parameters in the model. Incorporating prior information about the parameters reduces the effective number of degrees of freedom since the ability of the model to approximate the data vector y is partially constrained by the prior information. We give a general approach for providing bounds on the effective number of degrees of freedom for models with prior information on the parameters and illustrate the approach on common problems. In particular, we show how the effective number of degrees of freedom depends on spatial or temporal correlation lengths associated with Gaussian processes. The correlation lengths are seen to be tuning parameters used to match the model degrees of freedom to the (generally unknown) number of degrees of freedom associated with the system giving rise to the data. We also show how Gaussian process models can be related to Tikhonov regularisation for an appropriate set of basis functions.