Quantitative research: Preparation of incongruous economic data sets for archival data analysis

In the field of construction engineering and management, archival data sets are not always as correct and consistent as it would be desirable. Between different sources that are studied, e.g., companies, they may differ in format or content and within them, they may still be incongruous and require substantial preparation. This makes examining theories and extracting trends from historic data more difficult than it is for carefully controlled experimental studies or for collecting new data. The purpose of this paper is not to review the regression models that the writers developed during their research, but to focus on the data preparation that had to be applied before those analyses. The objective is to outline various techniques that can be applied to archival data that are related to construction engineering and management to give researchers a set of best practices on data preparation that can assist them in gleaning truths from them.