SPSS is a widely used program for statistical analysis in social science. It is also used by market researchers, health researchers, survey companies, government, education researchers, marketing organizations, data miners, and others. The original SPSS manual (Nie, Bent & Hull, 1970) has been described as one of “sociology’s most influential books” for allowing ordinary researchers to do their own statistical analysis. In addition to statistical analysis, data management (case selection, file reshaping, creating derived data) and data documentation (a metadata dictionary is stored in the datafile) are features of the base software.
SPSS 26 comes in both a new and the classic interface. We downloaded and tested the new interface. This review walks you through our main findings. SPSS 26 – Which “Subscription” Am I On? SPSS 26 – Data View & Variable View Tabs SPSS 26 – Menus & Dialogs SPSS 26 Output Tab – Tables […]
A Spearman rank correlation is a number between -1 and +1 that indicates to what extent 2 variables are monotonously related. Spearman Correlation – Example Spearman Rank Correlation – Basic Properties Spearman Rank Correlation – Assumptions Spearman Correlation – Formulas and Calculation Spearman Rank Correlation – Software Spearman Correlation – Example A sample of 1,000 […]
Running simple contingency tables in SPSS is easy enough. However, the default format is inconvenient and doesn’t meet APA standards. This tutorial walks you through 3 options for creating the desired tables: CROSSTABS is easy but requires some (manual) editing. CTABLES is faster but a bit harder and requires a custom tables license. TABLES is fast but rather challenging. We’ll […]
SPSS TableLooks are files that contain styling -colors, fonts, borders and more- for SPSS output tables. What can I (not) do with TableLooks? Applying TableLooks Creating TableLooks Developing TableLooks Issues with TableLooks Output Table Styled by TableLook Example Practice Data File This tutorial uses bank_clean.sav throughout. Part of its data view is shown below. Feel free to download these […]
The most basic table in statistics is probably a simple frequency distribution. Sadly, basic frequency tables from SPSS are monstrous. On top of that, they don’t meet APA recommendations. So how to create better frequency tables -preferably fast? This tutorial shows a cool trick for doing just that! We’ll use bank_clean.sav throughout, part of which is shown below. Why […]
This tutorial covers some obvious and some less obvious functions for editing numeric variables. You can follow along with this tutorial by downloading and opening hospital.sav. They syntax we’ll use can be copy-pasted or downloaded here. Specifying User Missing Values This tutorial will only use the last 2 variables in the data.* Before doing anything else, we first specify […]
What is Factor Analysis? Quick Data Check Running Factor Analysis in SPSS SPSS Factor Analysis Output Adding Factor Scores to Our Data What is Factor Analysis? Factor analysis is a statistical technique for identifying which underlying factors are measured by a (much larger) number of observed variables.Such “underlying factors” are often variables that are difficult […]
What is a Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality test? SPSS Kolmogorov-Smirnov test from NPAR TESTS SPSS Kolmogorov-Smirnov test from EXAMINE VARIABLES Reporting a Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test Wrong Results in SPSS? What is a Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality test? The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test examines if scores are likely to follow some distribution in some population.For avoiding confusion, there’s 2 Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests: there’s the one […]
SPSS CORRELATIONS creates tables with Pearson correlations and their underlying N’s and significance levels. For Spearman rank correlations and Kendall’s tau, use NONPAR-CORR. Both commands can be pasted from Analyze Correlate Bivariate. This tutorial quickly walks through the main options. We’ll use freelancers.sav throughout and we encourage you to download it and follow along with the examples. User Missing Values Before running any […]
SPSS chart templates are tiny text files that contain styling for charts. What are SPSS Chart Templates? Creating a Chart Template Applying Chart Templates Where do I Get Some Decent Chart Templates? Developing Your Own Chart Templates Practice Data File This tutorial walks you through creating and using chart templates. We’ll use bank.sav -partly shown below- throughout. […]
SPSS Output Tables SPSS Output Charts SPSS Output to WORD SPSS Output to Excel SPSS Output Tricks Exporting SPSS output is usually easier and faster than copy-pasting SPSS Output Introduction In SPSS, we usually work from 3 windows. These are the data editor window ; the syntax editor window ; the output viewer window . Our previous tutorials discussed the data […]
Set Up Project Folder and Open Data; SPSS Data File Inspection; SPSS Categorical Variable Inspection; SPSS Metric Variable Inspection; Optionally: Edit Data; Choose and Run Tables/Charts/Tests. 1. Set Up Project Folder and Open Data The biggest waste of time and effort in SPSS is probably not keeping projects organized. A related pitfall is not regularly making backup copies of the entire […]
Summary Learning just a handful of SPSS system settings allows you to get better results faster. This tutorial quickly walks you through the five most useful ones. We recommend you follow along with the examples by downloading and opening employees.sav. SPSS SET TNUMBERS SPSS TNUMBERS determine how data values are displayed. In SPSS, tnumbers (short for […]
One of the most common research questions is do different groups have different mean scores on some variable? This question is best answered in 3 steps: create a table showing mean scores per group -you’ll probably want to include the frequencies and standard deviations as well; create a chart showing mean scores per group; run some statistical test –ANOVA in this case. However, this […]
In some cases, ALTER TYPE in SPSS version 24 seems to report incorrect altered values when converting a string to a numeric value. This results in messed up data while SPSS reports that everything is fine. Let’s try and replicate the problem with the example below. Example We imported some .csv data in which some numeric values were flagged with an “a”. This indicates […]
Boldface Absolute Correlations > 0.5 Set Decimal Places for Output Tables Transpose One or Many Output Tables Delete Selection of Output Items Set Font Sizes and Styling for Output Tables Set Exact Sizes for Charts All examples require SPSS version 22 or higher. We’ll use bank_clean.sav -screenshot below- throughout this entire tutorial. OUTPUT MODIFY – What and Why? OUTPUT MODIFY […]
Running some basic descriptive statistics in SPSS is super easy with the DESCRIPTIVES command. However, the resulting table doesn’t even come close to the APA required format or what corporate clients often demand. So what’s the problem? Well, you’ll quickly find out if you try and create the table shown below. Nice and clean APA descriptives table. SPSS DESCRIPTIVES […]
EXECUTE runs pending transformations but many SPSS users don’t have a clue what that means. More importantly, when should you (not) run EXECUTE? And when do you really need it? Let’s dive in. We’ll use adratings.sav throughout, part of which is shown below. SPSS “Transformations Pending” As you probably figured out, our data hold 18 respondents who rated 3 different advertisements. […]
In SPSS, we sometimes encounter variables that are negatively coded: lower values indicate higher agreement or more positive sentiments. Although this is not really “wrong” in any way, positive coding is more intuitive. Especially when reporting means over variables, most readers naturally expect higher means to indicate something better, not worse. So what’s the best way to reverse code variables? […]
