Business Statistics Made Easy in SAS

The Pre-Analysis Data Cleaning & Preparation Steps

Before actually analyzing data to answer questions such as the CEO’s queries above, you will need to assess the data for integrity, clean any obvious errors and mistakes, and prepare the data for final analysis. These checks may include:

1. Initial data assessment and cleaning. Notice the following in Figure 6.1 First lines of initial dataset:

   1. Size of the fifth respondent is captured as “Bigg,” obviously a typographical error.
   2. The “Satisfaction03” score for Respondent 2 is captured as a “55”, but this is supposed to be a 1-7 scale.
   3. These are data entry mistakes. While easy to spot in such a small with the eye, you’ll not see this in a bigger table easily. Mis-entered data ...