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Before researchers can proceed with the next stages of data analysis, the data need to be prepared by checking questionnaires or other instruments of data capture for usability, editing responses for legibility, completeness and consistency, coding any responses that are not pre-coded, and assembling the data together by entering all the values for all the variables for all the cases into a data matrix. Data entry into the survey analysis package SPSS was explained in some detail.

Before analysis of the data can begin, some of the variables may need to be transformed in various ways and decisions may have to be made about how to handle missing values. The careful preparation of data ready for analysis should never be neglected. If poor-quality data are entered into the analysis, then no matter how sophisticated the statistical techniques applied, a poor or untrustworthy analysis will result. Handled with care, data preparation can substantially enhance the quality and usefulness of data analysis: paying inadequate attention to it can seriously compromise the validity of the results.