Discussion : Cleaning Data 

Every journey begins with a single step. Before you can become a master researcher providing thoughtful information analysis and meaningful conclusions, you must prepare your workspace and clean your tools. Without the crucial steps of organizing the data, preparing your software for analysis, and sharpening your quantitative skills, your research question will not be answered.

For this Discussion, you will learn how to prepare the information you have collected, removing corrupted or missing data in order to begin studying it. You will use the dataset provided to practice identifying challenges that arise during the cleaning process before presenting your findings to the class.

To Prepare:

• Review and use the Cleaning and Management Example dataset as you review the Cleaning and Managing Quantitative Data media program found in the Learning Resources.
• Access the Cleaning and Management Practice dataset in the Learning Resources to complete the Cleaning and Management Quiz (Note: Allow 30 minutes to complete).
• Complete the Cleaning and Management Quiz by Day 3. Note: This quiz is not assessed, but it must be completed prior to your posting to this Discussion.
• Reflect on the cleaning process during your observation of the Cleaning and Managing Quantitative Data media program and when completing the Cleaning and Management Quiz.
• For students using the PSPP software program, review the Learning Resources document Working With Datasets Job Aid.

By Day 4

Post an explanation of the challenges you might encounter in your experience through the cleaning process and how you might remedy those challenges. Then, explain why it is important to clean and manage data, and why this would be important to generalizability, confidence in accuracy of the results, or psychometric properties.