Getting Data Ready for Analysis

This chapter discusses collecting, coding, and cleaning up your data prior to conducting any of your main analyses. Given that most questionnaire data are collected online, it focuses on downloading data in a format that can be used in SPSS, importing it into SPSS if needed, and then coding, labeling, formatting, conducting descriptive statistics, and cleaning data so that data are accurate and ready for statistical analyses. Cleaning data is extremely important, as errors, inappropriately coded data (e.g., letters instead of numbers), or other issues need to be corrected before conducting any statistics. This chapter focuses on the first steps to take to obtain, utilize, and understand your data and includes some of the most important steps that you should be sure to take with all your data files.