APA Dictionary of Psychology

a method in which data for a variable pertinent to a specific assessment are included, even if values for the same individual on other variables are missing. For example, consider a researcher studying the influence of age, education level, and current salary on the socioeconomic status of a sample of employees. If assessing specifically how education and salary influence socioeconomic status, they could include all participants for whom that data had been recorded even if they were missing information on age, as the latter variable is not of interest in the current analysis. Also called available-case analysis. Compare listwise deletion.