Survey Data Cleaning Guidelines: (SPSS and Stata). 1st Edition
April 1, 2012 - Margaret Beaver
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EmailIDWP 123. Margaret Beaver. 2012. Survey Data Cleaning Guidelines: (SPSS and Stata). 1st Edition.
FOREWORD:
This publication is one of a series of MSU Food Security Project monographs and tutorials on
social science research, including survey design and implementation, and data cleaning and
analysis. As noted in the Acknowledgments, these materials owe a lot to the contributions
of many individuals, including Food Security Project faculty, students and staff, and
colleagues within collaborating institutions. Especially noteworthy among Food Security
Project staff are Ellen Payongayong and Margaret Beaver, who have provided expert advice
and support on survey research methods and data handling and analysis related to data
collection in our country projects, including Mozambique (Payongayong) and Kenya, Zambia,
and Mali (Beaver), among others. Margaret Beaver has also played a major training role,
both on campus and in the field, and has prepared an extensive and regularly updated set of
training materials in the use of SPSS and Stata (listed below). This paper represents a
distillation of Margaret Beaver’s many years of experience in supporting major survey
research projects in Africa. The paper focuses particularly on the process of preparing data
for analysis after data entry is completed. Given the importance of careful quality control at
this step, we believe that this paper will be a valuable reference for all who are engaged in
survey research.
