SPSS Tutorials: Variable Types

A variable’s type determines if a variable numeric or character, quantitative or qualitative. It also dictates what type of statistical analysis methods are appropriate for that data. This tutorial covers the variable types that SPSS recognizes. Variable Types In order for your data analysis to be accurate, it is imperative that you correctly identify

SPSS Tutorials: Date-Time Variables in SPSS

This tutorial covers how SPSS treats Date-Time variables, and how to use the Date & Time Wizard to create and compute variables using dates and times. 1. Working with Dates and Times in SPSS Datasets often include variables that denote dates or time. Thus, it is important to know how SPSS treats and works

Data Coding, Entry, and Checking in SPSS: Plan the Study, Pilot Test, and Collect Data

Plan the study. The research starts with identification of a research problem and research questions or hypotheses. It is also necessary to plan the research design before you select the data collection instrument(s) and begin to collect data. Most research methods books discuss this part of the research process extensively (e.g., see Gliner, Morgan,

1 Comment

Data Coding, Entry, and Checking in SPSS: Code Data for Data Entry

1. Guidelines for Data Coding Coding is the process of assigning numbers to the values or levels of each variable. Before starting the coding process, we want to present some broad suggestions or rules to keep in mind as you proceed. These suggestions are adapted from rules proposed in Newton and Rudestam’s (1999) useful

Data Coding, Entry, and Checking in SPSS – Problem 2.1: Check the Completed Questionnaires

Now examine the incomplete, unclear, or double answers in questionnaire. Stop and do this now, before proceeding. What issues did you see? The researcher needs to make rules about how to handle these problems and note them on the questionnaires or on a master “coding instructions” sheet so that the same rules are used

Data Coding, Entry, and Checking in SPSS – Problem 2.2: Define and Label the Variables

The next step is to create a data file into which you will enter the data. If you do not have the program open, you need to log on. When you see the startup window, click the Type in data button; then you should see a blank Data Editor that will look something like

Data Coding, Entry, and Checking in SPSS – Problem 2.3: Display Your Dictionary or Codebook

Now that you have defined and labeled your variables, you can print a codebook or dictionary of your variables. It is a very useful record of what you have done. Notice that the information in the codebook is essentially the same as that in the variable view  so you do not really have to

Data Coding, Entry, and Checking in SPSS – Problem 2.4: Enter Data

After defining and labeling the variables, your next task is to enter the data directly from the questionnaires or from a data entry form. Sometimes researchers transfer the data from the questionnaires to a data entry form (like Table 2.1) by hand before entering the data into SPSS. This may be helpful if the questionnaires

Data Coding, Entry, and Checking in SPSS – Problem 2.5: Run Descriptives and Check the Data

In order to get a better “feel” for the data and to check for other types of errors or problems on the questionnaires, we recommend that you run the statistics program called Descriptives. To compute basic descriptive statistics for all your subjects, you will need to do these steps: Select Analyze  → Descriptive Statistics

Importing data of other software in SPSS

In this post, we will show you how to import data in SPSS by two ways: Copying and pasting data, and directly Importing data files of other software (download datasets). 1. Copying and pasting In practice, the easiest way to get data into Stata is often overlooked: you can copy data from most applications

Computing Variables in SPSS

This tutorial shows how to compute new variables in SPSS using formulas and built-in functions. The data file in example is available to download here. 1. Computing Variables Sometimes you may need to compute a new variable based on existing information (from other variables) in your data. For example, you may want to: Convert

Recoding Variables in IBM SPSS

This tutorial shows how to use Recode into Different Variables and DO IF syntax to change or merge the categories of string or numeric variables in SPSS. The data in example is available to download here. 1. Recoding (Transforming) Variables Sometimes you will want to transform a variable by combining some of its categories

Recoding String Variables (Automatic Recode) in SPSS

In SPSS, recoding categorical string variables to numeric codes and converting blank strings to missing values can be done automatically using Automatic Recode. The data in example is available to download here. 1. Recoding Categorical String Variables to Labeled Numeric Variables using Automatic Recode When writing down the observed values of a categorical variable,

Weighting Cases in IBM SPSS

In SPSS, weighting cases allows you to assign "importance" or "weight" to the cases in your dataset. Some situations where this can be useful include: Your data is in the form of counts (the number of occurrences) of factors or events. The "weight" is the number of occurrences. Your data requires adjustments to correct for over- or under-representation of certain characteristics in your sample. (This often happens with large surveys: a "weighting" variable is developed to adjust a sample's composition to be reflective of the population's composition, or to control for over- or under-reporting from a certain group.) The Pew Research Center often

How to Rank Cases in SPSS

In its simplest form, a rank transform converts a set of data values by ordering them from smallest to largest, and then assigning a rank to each value. In SPSS, the Rank Cases procedure can be used to compute the rank transform of a variable. The data used for example is available to download

Sorting cases or variables in SPSS

Sorting a dataset rearranges the rows with respect to one or more variables. This tutorial discusses how to sort data using the drop-down menus in SPSS. The data used for example is available to download here. 1. Sorting Data Sorting data allows us to re-organize the data in ascending or descending order with respect

Grouping or Splitting Data in SPSS

In SPSS, Split File is used to run statistical analyses on subsets of data without separating your data into two different files. When analyzing data, it is sometimes useful to temporarily "group" or "split" your data in order to compare results across different subsets. This can be useful when you want to compare frequency distributions or descriptive statistics with respect to the categories of some variable (e.g., Gender) - especially if you want separate tables of results for each

Exporting anh Copying SPSS Outputs to Word or Excel

There are 2 ways to export and copy SPSS outputs to Word or Excel. We will show you how to do it. Let’s now download and open bank.sav; and open it in SPSS. We’ll use it for walking you in this post. Right. So with our data open, let’s create some output by running

Measurement and Descriptive Statistics with SPSS: Frequency Distributions

Frequency distributions are critical to understanding our use of measurement terms. We begin this chapter with a discussion of frequency distributions and two examples. Frequency tables and distributions can be used whether the variable involved has ordered or unordered levels or values. In this section, we only consider variables with many ordered values. A

Measurement and Descriptive Statistics with SPSS: Levels of Measurement

Measurement is the assignment of numbers or symbols to the different characteristics (values) of variables according to rules. In order to understand your variables, it is important to know their level of measurement. Depending on the level of measurement of a variable, the data can mean different things. For example, the number 2 might

1 Comment