When preparing data for quantitative analysis you need to be clear about the definition and selection of cases.

Values on an interval scale cannot meaningfully be added.

Coding involves you working through your data to code segments of these data according to the categories you have devised.

A missing data code can be used to indicate why data are missing.

A magazine advertisement is not considered a case.

For many secondary data sources, a suitable coding scheme will have already been devised when the data were first collected.

If you are using a spreadsheet, you will not need to keep a list of codes for each variable.

A case might be an organisation’s tweets.

A questionnaire asking a rating or scale question, such as how strongly a respondent agrees with a statement, collects ordinal data.

Virtually any business and management research you undertake is not likely to involve some numerical data.