There are many dialects of statistics and methodology terminology. Sometimes different discipline-culture use the same words in different ways. Often different disciplines have different terminologies for identical procedures.
Please try to provide a more detailed version of your question.
What is the nature of your cases? How many do you have?
What are the names, meanings, levels of measurement, missing data and valid data values.
What questions are you using the data to answer?
Art Kendall
Social Research Consultants