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 […]
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. […]
Introduction You may have heard the phrase that “computers only process ones and zeroes”. These are formally referred to as bits. This raises the question how computers represent letters (like Y, e and s). Representing characters using only bits basically involves two steps. First, each letter is represented by a number. Second, each number is represented by […]
Definition An SPSS macro is a function defined by the user in order to automate some task(s). SPSS Macro Syntax As discussed earlier, Python uses program blocks that start with BEGIN PROGRAM. and end with END PROGRAM.. A different kind of program block may start with DEFINE and end with !ENDDEFINE.. Between these commands you’ll find code that looks a lot like basic […]
In SPSS, LAG is a function that returns the value of a previous case. It’s mostly used on data with multiple rows of data per respondent. Here it comes in handy for calculating cumulative sums or counts. SPSS Lag Function SPSS LAG – Basic Example 1 The most basic way to use LAG is COMPUTE V1 = LAG(V2). This […]
SPSS transformations between DO IF … and END IF are applied only to cases (rows of data) that satisfy one or more conditions. In many cases, IF is a faster way to accomplish the same results. SPSS Do If Example Say we’d like to convert people’s monthly income into income classes. We may want to use different cut […]
This tutorial explains what SPSS datasets are. For a practical tutorial on working with datasets, see SPSS Datasets Tutorial 1 – Basics. Right, now an SPSS dataset is SPSS data that only exists in your computer’s working memory (RAM). Changes you make to it are discarded unless it’s saved as a data file. SPSS Data File and Dataset […]
Definition SPSS’ ANY is used to compare one value to a set of other values. SPSS Any – Basics ANY(a,b,c[,d…]) checks whether a is equal to any of the b, c[,d…]. Note that the first value is compared to the second through the last values. Each of these can either be a constant (“6”) or a variable (“v1”) over respondents. SPSS Any – Examples Suppose […]
Summary SPSS transformation commands (or simply “transformations”) can be loosely defined as commands that are not immediately carried out when you run them. Instead, they are kept in mind by SPSS and executed only when necessary. The table below gives an overview of SPSS’ main tranformation commands. Main SPSS Tranformation Commands COMMAND NAME GOAL TYPICAL USAGE […]
The assumption of equal intervals says that all distances between adjacent answer categories are equal in the repondents’ perception. This assumption is an attempt to justify treating ordinal variables as if they were metric variables. Doing so enables one to compute means, standard deviations and Pearson correlations on ordinal variables. This is simpler than using more appropriate techniques. Assumption of Equal […]
When we’re writing about SPSS or statistics in general, we often wonder if our readers really understand all the terminology we use such as variance, histogram or z-scores. For those we don’t, we wrote some background tutorials on such terms. These background tutorials are listed below.Hope you find them helpful! Glossary SPSS TEMPORARY Command Assumption of Equal Intervals – Calculations on […]
Survey Sampling – Introduction When it’s not feasible to study an entire target population, a simple random sample is the next best option; with sufficient sample size, it satisfies the assumption of independent and identically distributed variables. And perhaps even more important, it will tend to be nicely representative for the population with regard to […]
Summary How to draw one or many samples from your data in SPSS? This tutorial demonstrates some simple ways for doing so. We’ll point out some tips, tricks and pitfalls along the way. Let’s get started and create some test data by running the syntax below. SPSS Syntax for Creating Test Data *Create test data with […]
Basic Use COMPUTE v1 = RV.NORMAL(0,1). Summary In SPSS, RV is short for random variable. It draws random values from a given probability distribution.* The latter is specified as a period separated suffix as in RV.BERNOULLI(.5).RV is mostly but not necessarily used with COMPUTE. Random Sample (N = 10,000) from a Standard Normal Distribution SPSS Rv Examples A nice way to get […]
“I have 5 groups of 10 cases in my data. How can I draw a stratified random sample from these cases? That is, from groups 1 through 5 I’d like to draw exactly 5, 4, 5, 6 and 3 cases at random. What’s an efficient way to do this?” Before and after drawing our stratified […]
Sampling is at the very core of statistical tests: drawing conclusions on research populations based on (small) samples from those populations. Basically all statistical tests quietly assume that the data you’re analyzing are a simple random sample from your population. This assumption being ignored is the very reason why political polls are often widely off and research findings can’t be […]
Setting decimal places in SPSS output is not straightforward. A great option, however, is our Set Decimals for Output Tables Tool. An alternative is changing your variable formats. Finally, for full control, one needs Python Scripting or SaxBasic. 1. Changing Variable Formats The number of decimals in SPSS output basically depends on the combination of statistic, procedure and variable format. […]
Question “I have some empty categories in my data. For example, none of my respondents filled out “politician” as their job. Therefore, “politician” is completely absent from crosstabs. How can I include it with a zero frequency?” How to include an empty category in a crosstab? Solution The basic solution here is to add one […]
SPSS OMS (short for Output Management System) can convert your output to SPSS datasets. As we’ll demonstrate in a minute, this can save you huge amounts of time, effort and frustration. We recommend you follow along by downloading and opening course_evaluation.sav, part of which is shown below. Today’s Challenge Some client wants to see charts holding correlations of […]
Summary SPSS table templates are files that tell SPSS how to style one, many or all tables that appear in the output viewer window. Some examples of such styling are the colors and sizes of fonts and borders. The figure below shows a DESCRIPTIVES table with and without a table template applied to it. Just like SPSS data […]
