Deck 12: Data Management and Cleaning

Question 1

You are a research assistant for a new study and have just received your first data set. What is the first thing you should do with the data?

A) Start running basic statistical analyses
B) Save a copy of the file in case it's damaged or lost later
C) Begin cleaning for outliers and missing values
D) Code responses

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Creating a codebook helps:

A) assign numerical values to responses.
B) ensure consistency when coding responses.
C) researchers conduct data analysis.
D) All of these are correct.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

Electronic data platforms, like Excel or SPSS, cannot help you:

A) check for data outliers.
B) conduct data analysis.
C) avoid coding errors.
D) improve statistical power.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

It is okay to change the value of an out-of-range data value if the new value does not inflate the mean.

Question 5

Imagine you're analyzing the first wave of data from your study, and you notice a set of questions are consistently unanswered by participants. This is due to:

A) systematic missingness.
B) questions that are particularly sensitive.
C) a programming flaw.
D) All of these are correct.

Question 6

The first step of categorical data analysis is to describe the data in terms of their central tendency and variability.

Question 7

Assume you have gathered six participants, ages 53, 62, 65, 57, 61, and 68, and calculated the age that divides the data set into two equal halves. What did you find?

A) Central tendency
B) Dispersion
C) Mean
D) Median

Question 8

__________ standard deviations from the mean will provide you with a 95% confidence interval on a normal distribution curve.

A) Three
B) Two
C) One
D) Zero

Question 9

If you wanted to create a chart recording people's age in intervals, such as 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, and 70+, what kind of data are you trying to depict?

A) Ordinal data
B) Categorical data
C) Scaled data
D) Continuous data

Question 10

Assume you're analyzing the age distribution of your study and notice that a large amount of your participants are ages 40-49. Furthermore, there's less of each age group as they get older. What are you observing?

A) Positive skew
B) Negative skew
C) Normal distribution
D) None of these is correct.