SPSS How to use Spss software

Using SPSS
SPSS = Statistical Package for the Social Sciences

Working with SPSS means working with
data and data files. So we shall first see
how to open a data file in SPSS.
General data files are .asv, .xls, .db
extension files.
SPSS works with DATA
file
(.asv, .xls, .db)

 Alternatively, we can use the Open File button
on the toolbar.
 A dialog box for opening files is displayed.
 By default, IBM® SPSS® Statistics data files
(.savextension) are displayed.
ALTERNATIVE WAY

Here we can see a sample data file:

Familiar with Data file
Here we can see the parts of a data file

Entering the data
 After setting up the data file format from the variable view
we can directly input data in the data view , as below :

 The first step for entering the actual data is to
click on the Data View tab.
 To enter new data, click in an empty cell in the
first empty row. The "Tab" key will enter the value
and jump to the next cell to the right. You may
also use the Up, Down, Left, and Right arrow keys
to enter values and move to another cell for data
input.
 To edit existing data points (i.e., the change a
specific data value), click in the cell, type in the
new value, and press the Tab, Enter, Up, Down,
Right, or Left arrow keys.

 Name
 The name of each SPSS variable in a given file must be
unique; it must start with a letter; it may have up to 8
characters (including letters, numbers, and the underscore _
(note that certain key words are reversed and may not be
used as variable names, e.g., "compute", "sum", and so forth).
To change an existing name, click in the cell containing the
name, highlight the part you want to change, and type in the
replacement. To create a new variable name, click in the first
empty row under the name column and type a new (unique)
variable name.

 Type
 The two basic types of variables that you will use
are numeric and string. Numeric variables may only
have numbers assigned. String variables may
contain letters or numbers, but even if a string
variable happens to contain only numbers, numeric
operations on that variable will not be allowed
(e.g., finding the mean, variance, standard
deviation, etc...). To change a variable type, click in
that cell on the grey box with ...

If you select a numeric variable, you can then click in the width box or
the decimal box to change the default values of 8 characters reserved
to displaying numbers with 2 decimal places. For whole numbers, you
can drop the decimals down to 0.
If you select a string variable, you can tell SPSS how much "room" to
leave in memory for each value, indicating the number of characters to
be allowed for data entry in this string variable.

 Width
 The width of a variable is the number of characters SPSS will allow to
be entered for the variable. If it is a numerical value with decimals,
this total width has to include a spot for each decimal, as well as one
for the decimal point. You can change a width by clicking in the
width cell for the desired variable and typing a new number or you
can use the arrow keys at the edge of the cell

 Decimals
 The decimals of a variable is the number of decimal places that SPSS
will display. If more decimals have been entered (or computed by
SPSS), the additional information will be retained internally but not
displayed on screen. For whole numbers, you would reduce the
number of decimals to zero. You can change the number of decimal
places by clicking int he decimals cell for the desired variable and
typing a new number or you can use the arrow keys at the edge of
the cell

 Label
 The label of a variable is a string of text to
indentify in more detail what a variable represents.
Unlike the name, the label is limited to 255
characters and may contain spaces and
punctuation. For instance, if there is a variable for
each question on a questionnaire, you would type
the question as the variable label. To change or
edit a variable label, simply click anywhere within
the cell.

 Values
 Although the variable label goes a long way to explaining
what the variable represents, for categorical data (discrete
data of both nominal and ordinal levels of measurement), we
often need to know which numbers represent which
categories. To indicate how these numbers are assigned, one
can add labels to specific values by clicking on the ... box in
the values cell

◦ Click in the Value field to type a specific numeric value
◦ Click in the Label field to type the corresponding label
◦ Click on the Add button to add this pair of value and label
to the list
 You can remove a pairing created above by clicking
on that pair and then clicking on the delete button.
Similarly, you can change pairing by clicking on the
pair, then typing in a new value, a new label, or
both; then, you click on the Change button. When
you are satisfied with the definitions of each value,
click on the OK button

The real beauty of value labels can be seen in the Data
View by clicking on the "toe tag" icon in the tool bar ,
which switches between the numeric values and their
labels

 Missing
 We sometimes want to signal to SPSS that data should be
treated as missing, even though there is some other
numerical code recorded instead of the data actually being
missing (in which case SPSS displays a single period -- this is
also called SYSTEM MISSING data). In this example, after
clicking on the ... button in the Missing cell, I declared "9",
"99", and "999" all to be treated by SPSS as missing (i.e.,
these values will be ignored)

 Columns
 The columns property tells SPSS how wide the column should
be for each variable. Don't confuse this one with width, which
indicates how many digits of the number will be displayed.
The column size indicates how much space is allocated rather
than the degree to which it is filled.
 Align
 The alignment property indicates whether the information in
the Data View should be left-justified, right-justified, or
centered

 Measure
 The Measure property indicates the level of measurement.
Since SPSS does not differentiate between interval and ratio
levels of measurement, both of these quantitative variable
types are lumped together as "scale". Nominal and ordinal
levels of measurement, however, are differentiated

 The Analyze menu contains a list of reporting and statistical
analysis categories.
We will start by creating a simple frequency table (table of counts).
This example requires the Statistics Base option. Below the table we
will analyze
Data Analysis

Running an analysis
For analyzing the data let select :

 Now we can see the frequency box as
below:
An icon next to
each variable
provides
information about
data type and level
of measurement.

► Click the
variable Income category
in thousands [inccat].
If the variable label
and/or name appears
truncated in the list,
the complete
label/name is
displayed when the
cursor is positioned
over it.
The variable
name inccat is displayed
in square brackets after
the descriptive variable
label.

► Click Gender [gender] in the
source variable list and drag the
variable into the target
Variable(s) list.
► Click Income category in
thousands [inccat] in the source
list and drag it to the target list.
Press OK to execute.

 Click Transform>Compute Variable…

 Now the compute window will open

 Here we can operate any mathematical operations on the
variables data like finding average, adding, multiply etc.
 Add the variables from right side and calculate from the
calculation box then press ok.

 Now the Frequencies box will appear like below:
 Now click on the Statistics button
click

 Now we will see the Statistics box like below:
 Here we can check the box for Mean, Median,
Mode, Sum and others statistical analysis.

 From the use of SPSS we see that SPSS
is very handy and easy to analyze data.
 SPSS is a very powerful tool for
statistical analysis.
CONCLUSION

 www.ilstu.edu – Internet website
 www.dataservices.gmu.edu -- Internet
website
 www.uvm.edu – Internet website
 www.spss.com – Internet website
 Etc
 Created by Debashis Baidya
 Student ID: 111249

SPSS How to use Spss software

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