Introduction to SPSS
Dr. Ashish Kr. Shukla
Department of Statistics
Ramanujan College
University of Delhi
Object of the Course
• About SPSS
• The basics of managing data files
• The basic analysis in SPSS
Introduction: What is SPSS?
• Originally it is a short form of Statistical
Package for the Social Science but now it
stands for Statistical Product and Service
Solutions
• One of the most popular statistical
packages which can perform highly
complex data manipulation and analysis
with simple instructions
The basics of managing
data files
Opening SPSS
• Start → All Programs → SPSS Inc→ SPSS 16.0 → SPSS
16.0
Opening SPSS
• The default window will have the data editor
• There are two sheets in the window:
1. Data view 2. Variable view
Data View window
• The Data View window
This sheet is visible when you first open the Data Editor
and this sheet contains the data
• Click on the tab labeled Variable View
Click
Variable View window
• This sheet contains information about the data set that is stored
with the dataset
• Name
– The first character of the variable name must be alphabetic
– Variable names must be unique, and have to be less than 64
characters.
– Spaces are NOT allowed.
Variable View window: Type
• Type
– Click on the ‘type’ box. The two basic types of variables
that you will use are numeric and string. This column
enables you to specify the type of variable.
Variable View window: Width
• Width
– Width allows you to determine the number of
characters SPSS will allow to be entered for the
variable
Variable View window: Decimals
• Decimals
– Number of decimals
– It has to be less than or equal to 16
3.14159265
Variable View window: Label
• Label
– You can specify the details of the variable
– You can write characters with spaces up to 256
characters
Variable View window: Values
• Values
– This is used and to suggest which
numbers represent which categories when
the variable represents a category
Defining the value labels
• Click the cell in the values column as shown below
• For the value, and the label, you can put up to 60
characters.
• After defining the values click add and then click OK.
Click
The Window: Data Editor
• Data Editor
Spreadsheet-like system for defining, entering, editing,
and displaying data. Extension of the saved file will be
“sav.”
The Window: Output Viewer
• Output Viewer
Displays output and errors. Extension of the saved file will
be “spv.”
Practice 1
• How would you put the following information into
SPSS?
N am e G ender H e ig h t
J A U N ITA 2 5 .4
S A LLY 2 5 .3
D ONNA 2 5 .6
S A B RINA 2 5 .7
J OHN 1 5 .7
MARK 1 6
E RIC 1 6 .4
B RUC E 1 5 .9
Value = 1 represents Male and Value = 2 represents Female
Practice 1 (Solution Sample)
Click
Click
Saving the data
• To save the data file you created simply click ‘file’ and
click ‘save as.’ You can save the file in different forms
by clicking “Save as type.”
Click
Sorting the data
• Click ‘Data’ and then click Sort Cases
Sorting the data (cont’d)
• Double Click ‘Name of the students.’ Then click
ok.
Click
Click
Practice 2
• How would you sort the data by the
‘Height’ of students in descending order?
• Answer
– Click data, sort cases, double click ‘height of
students,’ click ‘descending,’ and finally click
ok.
Transforming data
• Click ‘Transform’ and then click ‘Compute Variable…’
Transforming data (cont’d)
• Example: Adding a new variable named ‘lnheight’ which is
the natural log of height
– Type in lnheight in the ‘Target Variable’ box. Then type in
‘ln(height)’ in the ‘Numeric Expression’ box. Click OK
Click
Transforming data (cont’d)
• A new variable ‘lnheight’ is added to the table
Practice 3
• Create a new variable named “sqrtheight”
which is the square root of height.
• Answer
Opening the sample data
• Open ‘Employee data.sav’ from the SPSS
– Go to “File,” “Open,” and Click Data
Opening the sample data
• Go to Program Files,” “SPSSInc,” “SPSS16,” and
“Samples” folder.
• Open “Employee Data.sav” file
The basic analysis
The basic analysis of SPSS
• Frequencies
– This analysis produces frequency tables showing
frequency counts and percentages of the values
of individual variables.
• Descriptives
– This analysis shows the maximum, minimum,
mean, and standard deviation of the variables
Frequencies
• Click ‘Analyze,’ ‘Descriptive statistics,’ then
click ‘Frequencies’
Frequencies
• Click gender and put it into the variable box.
• Click ‘Charts.’
• Then click ‘Bar charts’ and click ‘Continue.’
Click Click
Frequencies
• Finally Click OK in the Frequencies box.
Click
Descriptives
• Click ‘Analyze,’ ‘Descriptive statistics,’ then
click ‘Descriptives…’
• Click ‘Educational level’ and ‘Beginning
Salary,’ and put it into the variable box.
• Click Options
Click
Descriptives
• The options allows you to analyze other
descriptive statistics besides the mean and Std.
• Click ‘variance’ and ‘kurtosis’
• Finally click ‘Continue’
Click
Click
Descriptives
• Finally Click OK in the Descriptives box. You will
be able to see the result of the analysis.
Thank You
For further Questions:
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