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 […]
While working on data holding a record for each day, I wanted to create some graphs on week level. So I extracted the weeks with XDATE.WEEK but the week numbers returned by SPSS are nonsensical: every week starts on January 1 and most years end up with week 53 holding just 1 day. There’s different standards for week […]
Having a solid understanding of what SPSS time variables are, you may find calculations on them surprisingly easy. This tutorial will demonstrate SPSS’ main time functions. However, we’ll also show that we often don’t even need them for getting things done. Throughout this tutorial, keep in mind that SPSS time variables contain time spans in numbers of […]
SPSS date variables may seem a bit puzzling at first. However, getting things done fast and accurately with SPSS date variables is not hard at all if you understand some basics. This tutorial will walk you through. You can follow along by downloading and opening hospital.sav. SPSS Date Variables – What Are They? First of all, […]
SPSS Unicode mode is a setting which implies that all text is encoded as UTF-8 (Unicode Tranformation Format – 8 bit). Note that this tutorial leans substantively on Unicode. SPSS Unicode Mode – What and Why Up to version 15, all character encoding in SPSS was based on code pages. SPSS using code pages is now […]
Summary SPSS uses a handful of hidden variables for keeping track of things. These so called system variables have names starting with “$” and can be useful in some cases. The most important one is $casenum, the number shown next to each case in the data editor window. SPSS $casenum SPSS $casenum In the left outline of the […]
Introduction In SPSS we sometimes find ordinal variables where lower values indicate more positive attitudes or larger quantities. An example is shown in the screenshot below. Now, the coding scheme shown above is not really ‘wrong’ in any way. However, we usually prefer higher values indicating more positive attitudes or larger quantities because we find this more […]
Python is among the most important programming languages today and can be used in SPSS. Doing so may truly decimate the time and effort you need to get things done. This tutorial briefly explains what Python is, how it relates to SPSS and why you might want to start using it. What is Python? Python is among the most important […]
Introduction Working efficiently with SPSS time variables is not hard if you understand some basics. This tutorial walks you through just those. We recommend you follow along by downloading and opening hospital.sav. SPSS Time Variables – What Are They? SPSS time variables are variables that hold time intervals in numbers of seconds. Although the actual time values […]
SPSS chart templates are files that tell SPSS how to style charts in the Output Viewer window. SPSS chart templates are easy to use and make your SPSS output look very professional. SPSS chart templates are files that tell SPSS how to style one, many or all charts that appear in the output viewer window. Examples […]
SPSS date calculations are much easier than they may seem at first. The first key to success is understanding what SPSS date variables really are. Next, choose (and possibly combine) the right date functions. This tutorial will walk you through the main ones. We recommend you follow along by downloading and opening hospital.sav. SPSS Main Date Functions The table […]
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 […]
SPSS means “Statistical Package for the Social Sciences” and was first launched in 1968. 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 – Quick Overview Main Features SPSS is software for editing and analyzing all sorts of data. These data may come […]
SPSS” Syntax Editor window is the second of SPSS’ three main windows. As we’ll see in a minute, this is where we run commands for opening files, editing data, generating results and, finally, saving files. The Syntax Editor is recognized by an orange icon in its left top corner. SPSS Syntax – First Encounter We recommend […]
