11 L - Data rpocessing

DATA PREPARATION, PROCESSING STEPS

• Review the completes questionnaires

• Verification of completed questionnaires

• Coding

• Data entry

• Data cleaning

• Statistical adjustment

• Data analysis plan

REVIEW THE QUESTIONNAIRE

The aim is to assess the thoroughness of the completion and the quality of the survey

VERIFICATION OF THE QUESTIONNAIRE

Its purpose is to review the questionnaires to improve accuracy

Coding

means assigning a code, usually a number, to each possible response to each question. The code includes an indication of the column position (field) and data record it will occupy

codebook

contains coding instructions and the necessary information about variables in the data set

Data entry

the coded data in the questionnaire or code sheet must be entered into a computer

Data Cleansing

Complete and thorough checking of the consistency of responses and addressing missing responses

DATA CLEANING TREATMENT OF MISSING RESPONSES

• Substitute a neutral value

• Substitute an imputed response

• casewise deletion

• pairwise deletion

STATISTICAL ADJUSTMENT OF DATA

• Weighing

• Redefining a variable

• Transformation of scales

Weighing

A statistical adjustment where a weight is assigned to each case or respondent that reflects their relative importance to other cases or respondents

Redefining a variable

merging categories, creating a new variable, e.g. create dummy variables

Transformation of scales

Modify scale values to make them comparable to other scales or to suit certain analytical purposes

DATA ANALYSIS

• formulate hypotheses

• formulate a data processing

• review your hypotheses

• Draw initial conclusions

• formulate a story around the findings

DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS

• Frequency distributions, cross-tabulation, X^2 - statistics

• Measures of central tendency

• Measures of variability