Summary Example of Euro signs in Data View Some SPSS data files contain variables that reflect amounts of money such as revenue or expenses. If so, you probably want to display the correct currencies in data view as well as your output tables and charts. This tutorial quickly shows how to do just that. Creating […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Many easy options have been proposed for combining the values of categorical variables in SPSS. However, the real information is usually in the value labels instead of the values. This tutorial proposes a simple trick for combining categorical variables and automatically applying correct value labels to the result. SPSS Combine Categorical Variables Example You may follow along by downloading and opening hospital.sav. Now say […]
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. […]
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 […]
Introduction This tutorial shows how to work proficiently with SPSS datetime variables. You can follow along with it by downloading and opening hospital.sav. SPSS Main Datetime Functions This tutorial will cover the datetime functions outlined in the table below. Most of them apply to SPSS date variables and time variables as well because their values are stored in numbers of […]
SPSS date, time and datetime variables are shown in a nice and readable format such as “8-Jan-2013 16:56:10”. However, they all contain just numbers of seconds. This may sound daunting at first but soon turns out to make all sorts of time manipulations surprisingly easy. It also implies that most SPSS date functions can be used on date, time and datetime […]
Introduction Extracting the year (or any component) from a date is straightforward with the XDATE (“EXtract DATE“) function. Copy-paste-run the syntax presented below for a demonstration of XDATE. SPSS Xdate Syntax Example *1. Create mini test data. data list free/date(edate10). begin data ’01/01/01′ ’12/12/12′ end data. *2. Extract the year. compute year_from_date = xdate.year(date). exe. *3. Hide decimals for […]
Summary For time calculations (such as the number of days between two dates) proper date variables are needed. In some cases, the digits of a numeric variable may represent year, month and day. This tutorial shows how to convert this format into an actual date variable. Convert Numbers to SPSS Date Variables In some cases, […]
COMPUTE v2 = RANGE(V1,2,4). SPSS RANGE Function Result Summary SPSS’ RANGE function is used to evaluate whether or not values are within a given range. Test values equal to the lower or upper boundary are also within the given range. Run the syntax below for a quick demonstration. SPSS Range Syntax Example *1. Create couple of cases. data list free/v1(f1). begin […]
Running VARSTOCASES is often necessary for generating nice charts in SPSS. One of the many examples is a stacked bar chart for comparing multiple variables. Sadly, we lose our variable labels when running VARSTOCASES and we really do need those. The solution is a simple tool that generates our VARSTOCASES for us and applies the variable labels of the input variables as value […]
Definition Scratch variables are temporary helper variables that don’t show up in your data. A variable is a scratch variable if (and only if) its name starts with “#”. SPSS Scratch Variable – Introduction Say we have a data file holding phone numbers. Now we’d like to extract the area codes into a separate variable. […]
DO REPEAT is a command for running other commands repetitively.SPSS DO REPEAT is often used for looping over (possibly new) variables. VECTOR with LOOP is an alternative way for doing so. Introduction Suppose we have a variable containing values 1 through 4 and we’d like to dichotomize it for a regression analysis. (For some more background, see Creating Dummy Variables in SPSS.) […]
SPSS DO REPEAT – Simple Tutorial & Examples SPSS LOOP – Quick Tutorial & Examples SPSS VECTOR – Quick Tutorial
Summary ADD FILES is an SPSS command that’s mainly used for merging data sources holding similar variables but different cases. (For the same cases but different variables, see MATCH FILES.) A second use is for reordering and/or dropping variables in a single dataset. SPSS Add Files Matches Data Sources on Variable Names SPSS Add Files – Basic Usage The ADD FILES command […]
