Define Data cleaning in preliminary data analysis

Data cleaning focuses on error detection and consistency checks and treatment of missing responses. First step in the data cleaning process is to check every variable for data that are out of the range or as otherwise known as logically inconsistent data. Such data should be corrected as they can hamper overall analysis process. Most advance statistical packages provide an output relating to such inconsistent data. Inconsistent data should be closely examined as sometimes they might not be inconsistent and be representing legitimate response.