Following a typical project workflow, SPSS is great for Now that we have a basic idea of how SPSS works, let's take a look at what it can do. If anybody raises any doubts regarding your outcomes, you can show exactly what you did and -if needed- correct and rerun it in seconds.įor non SPSS users, the look and feel of SPSS’ Syntax Editor window probably come closest to Notepad: a single window basically just containing plain text. Your syntax makes your SPSS work replicable. The basic point is that syntax can be saved, corrected, rerun and shared between projects or users. But why use syntax if SPSS has such a nice menu? Like so, SPSS users unfamiliar with syntax can still use it. Has the exact same result as running this command from SPSS’ menu like we did earlier.īesides typing commands into the Syntax Editor window, most of them can also be pasted into it by clicking through SPSS’ menu options. Here we can type and run SPSS code known as SPSS syntax. Now, SPSS has a second option for running this (or any other) command: we can open a third window, known as the syntax editor window. The output table we showed was created by running D escriptive Statistics from SPSS’ menu. The screenshot below illustrates the result. Tables are usually copied in rich text format, which means they'll retain their styling such as fonts and borders. For instance, many SPSS users use a word processor such as MS Word, OpenOffice or GoogleDocs for reporting. SPSS Output items, typically tables and charts, are easily copy-pasted into other programs. Creating output in SPSS does not change our data in any way unlike Excel, SPSS uses different windows for data and research outcomes based on those data.įor non SPSS users, the look and feel of SPSS’ Output Viewer window probably comes closest to a Powerpoint slide holding items such as blocks of text, tables and charts. The screenshot below shows what it looks like.Īs we see, the Output Viewer window has a different layout and structure than the Data Editor window we saw earlier. It holds a nice table with all statistics on all variables we chose. SPSS Output WindowĪfter clicking Ok, a new window opens up: SPSS’ output viewer window. So how to analyze your data in SPSS? Well, one option is using SPSS’ elaborate menu options.įor instance, if our data contain a variable holding respondents’ incomes over 2010, we can compute the average income by navigating to D escriptive Statistics as shown below.ĭoing so opens a dialog box in which we select one or many variables and one or several statistics we'd like to inspect. Right, so SPSS can open all sorts of data and display them -and their metadata- in two sheets in its Data Editor window. This is generally known as the “codebook” but in SPSS it's called the dictionary.įor non SPSS users, the look and feel of SPSS’ Data Editor window probably come closest to an Excel workbook containing two different but strongly related sheets. Metadata is information about the meaning of variables and data values. It shows the metadata associated with the data. SPSS Variable ViewĪn SPSS data file always has a second sheet called variable view. A more detailed explanation on the exact meaning of our variables and data values is found in a second sheet shown below. For instance, our first record seems to contain a male respondent from 1979 and so on. This sheet -called data view- always displays our data values. SPSS Data ViewĪfter opening data, SPSS displays them in a spreadsheet-like fashion as shown in the screenshot below from freelancers.sav. Let's now have a quick look at what SPSS looks and feels like. spreadsheets from MS Excel or OpenOffice.SPSS can open all file formats that are commonly used for structured data such as These data may come from basically any source: scientific research, a customer database, Google Analytics or even the server log files of a website. SPSS is software for editing and analyzing all sorts of data. Since SPSS was acquired by IBM in 2009, it's officially known as IBM SPSS Statistics but most users still just refer to it as “SPSS”. SPSS means “ Statistical Package for the Social Sciences” and was first launched in 1968. SPSS – What Is It? By Ruben Geert van den Berg under Basics
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