listwise deletion
a strategy for dealing with the problem of missing data in which an entire case record is excluded from statistical analysis if values are found to be missing for any variable of interest. For example, consider a researcher examining the relationships among grade point averages in high school, scores on college admissions tests, and grade point averages in college. If, for whatever reason, a value has not been recorded for one of those variables for certain participants, all of the information for those individuals is removed from the data set and analyses are performed only on the remaining (complete) records. Also called casewise deletion; complete-case analysis. Compare pairwise deletion.