The Data Detective's Toolkit

Chapter 7: Inspect and Edit Flow through Skip Patterns

Introduction

Skip patterns are commonly used in surveys to ensure that only relevant questions are asked of each participant. Your role as a programmer is to validate the data flowing through a skip pattern. The first step is to uncover any contradictory responses and incorrect flow of the data through each skip pattern. Once you identify any problems that occur, your next step is to replace each inconsistent value with a substitute value that maintains the integrity of the participant’s data. This can make your job of checking and repairing skip patterns very arduous. The %TK_skip_edit macro greatly reduces this burden.

This chapter teaches you how to validate variables that are part of ...