How long does it take to clean data? I am trying to plan out how long it will take me to clean my survey data. I have about 200 responses. The survey takes about 15 minutes, about 40-60 questions (depending on the logic). I have very few open-ended questions (maybe three total). Someone told me it should only take a few days to clean the data while others say 2 weeks. I am not really sure how to plan for this stage, so any guidance about how long it might take to clean a survey of this scale would be very helpful. I have never cleaned survey data before, and while I have some experience with Stata, I have never used it to clean my own data. Also, if you have any recommendations for resources that detail the cleaning process, I would be very grateful.
 A: It will depend on your skill, the "cleanliness" required, and the messiness of the data when you receive it.
It sounds like you are inexperienced. So that will make it take longer. I'd recommend you stick to Excel and not mess with STATA (but either way make sure you save versions, check things against the original, etc.)
Cleanliness: sometimes this is just fixing things like non-numeric values in a numeric field. Other times as part of the analysis process it means re-coding values (if age is a question, and you get one number, you might decide later to group it 10-20, 21-30, etc). The better you can define this up front the less time it will take you (and the more research you can do in advance).
Perhaps someone who has done it before (preferably, someone who says it only takes a few days) can help you-- either sitting with you as you start; or showing you examples of what they've done before.
To summarize: there is no one-size-fits all approach to data cleaning. You will find many examples and tips and packages to help under names like data cleaning/cleansing/tidying/wrangling, but those generally will only help you do something that you already conceptually understand that you need to do what it takes to do it (they'll just help do it better/faster/more accurately).
