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 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 […]
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 […]
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? […]
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 […]
SPSS hasn’t exactly been known for generating nice charts, although you really can do so by using your own chart templates. SPSS 25, however, allows you to “create great looking charts by default!” This made me wonder: are the new charts really that great? The remainder of this article walks through the old and new looks for the big 5 charts in […]
I’m a pretty happy SPSS user but since a while, the software has been telling me that “Your license will expire in … days.” I had already extended my license with another year but -apparently- SPSS seemed to be oblivious to that. It took me some trial and error to troubleshoot the issue. Since I’m running this […]
SPSS basic operators are mainly used with IF, DO IF and COMPUTE. They work mostly as you’d expect but they do have a couple of surprises in store. No worries, we’ll walk you through. We’ll demonstrate how to get things done on the last 5 variables in hospital.sav. Before jumping into SPSS operators, we’ll first set 6 […]
Summary SPSS commands come in three basic types: procedures, transformations and other commands. Understanding this distinction will allow you to get things done in SPSS faster and more efficiently. SPSS Command Types Diagram SPSS Transformations As shown in the figure, the first question is when a command is executed. Some SPSS commands are not carried out […]
Summary This tutorial walks you through opening a .csv data file in SPSS. We chose a .csv file as obtained from Google Analytics (GA). Since many readers may be unfamiliar with GA, the screenshot below gives a basic idea of what the data look like before we export them as a .csv file. The original […]
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 […]
