APA Dictionary of Psychology

one of several methods of inserting values for missing data (see imputation) in which missing observations or data points are replaced by values from similar responses in the sample at hand. Suppose that a patient survey was conducted in two hospitals, A and B, and that five people from Hospital A failed to respond to an item of the survey. Sampling five values from the respondents who did respond to that item at Hospital A and substituting these values for the missing observations is an example of a hot-deck imputation. Compare cold-deck imputation.