Fundamentals of Data Analysis Editing and Coding Editing The role of the editing process is to identify omissions, ambiguities,

, and errors in the responses. It should be conducted in the field by the interviewer and field supervisor, as well as by the analyst just prior to data analysis. Among the problems to be identified are the following: 1. Interviewer error Interviewers may not be giving the respondent the correct instructions. 2. Omissions Respondents often fail to answer a single question or a section of the questionnaire, either deliberately or inadvertently. 3. Ambiguity A response might not be legible or it might be unclear which of two boxes is checked in a multiple response system. 4. Inconsistencies Sometimes two responses can be logically inconsistent. For example, a respondent who is a lawyer may have checked a box indicating that he or she did not complete high school. 5. Lack of cooperation In a long questionnaire with hundreds of attitude or image questions, a respondent might rebel and check the same response (in an agreedisagree scale, for example) for a long list of questions. 6. Ineligible respondent An inappropriate respondent may be included in the sample. For example, if a sample is supposed to include only women over 18, others should be excluded. When such problems are identified, there are several alternatives available. The preferred alternative, where practical, is to recontact the respondent. This is often quite feasible and should be done by the interviewer if the questions involved are important enough to warrant the effort. Another alternative, to throw out the whole questionnaire as not usable, might be appropriate if it were clear that the respondent either did not understand the survey or was not cooperating. A less extreme alternative is to throw ou: only the problem questions and retain the balance of the questions. Some respondents will bypass questions like income or age, for example, and cooperate fully with the other questions. When the analysis involves income or age, only those respondents who answered those questions will be included, but in the rest of the analysis all respondents could be included. Stil another alternative Is to code illegible or missing answers into a category such as dont know or no opinion. Such an approach may simplify the data analysis without materially distorting the interpretation. A byproduct of the editing process is to provide evaluation and guidance to the interviewers. A tendency of an interviewer to allow a certain type of error to occur should be detected by the editing process. Coding Coding the closed-ended questions is fairly straightforward. In this process, we specify exactly how the responses are to be entered. Figure 13-1 shows three of the questions for the HMO study introduced in Chapter 3. Question 18 is to be entered in column 46. The responses are coded as 1 through 5. Thus, if I am not sure now were checked, a 3 would be entered in column 46. Similarly, the next question would be entered in column 47 Question 20 will be entered in columns 48 and 49. Coding for open-ended questions is much more difficult. Usually a lengthy list of possible responses is generated and then each response is placed into one of the list items. Often the assignment of a response involves a judgment decision if the response does not exactly match a list item. For example, a question such as, Why did you select your instrument from Ajax Electronics? might elicit literally hundreds of different responses, such as price, delivery, accuracy, reliability, familiarity, doesnt break down, can get it repaired, features, includes spare parts, a good manual, appearance, size, and shape. Decisions must be made about the response categories. Should reliability and doesnt break down be in the same

category, or do they represent two different responses? The difficulty of coding and analyzing open-ended responses provides a motivation to avoid them in the questionnaire whenever possible.