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

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Measurement and Descriptive Statistics with SPSS: Descriptive Statistics and Plots

Now we expand our discussion of frequency distributions to include frequency tables, which are constructed in very similar ways for all four types of measurement. A difference is that with nominal data, the order in which the categories are listed is arbitrary. In Fig. 3.3, the frequency table listed protestant, catholic, and then not religious. However, protestant could be put after or between catholic and not religious because the categories are not ordered. In ordinal and approximately normal data, the order cannot vary (e.g., medium always should be between low and

Measurement and Descriptive Statistics with SPSS: The Normal Curve

Figure 3.10 is an example of a normal curve. The frequency distributions of many of the variables used in the behavioral sciences are distributed approximately as a normal curve when N is large. Examples of such variables that approximately fit a normal curve are height, weight, intelligence, and many personality variables. Notice that for

Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) with SPSS

1. What Is EDA? After the data are entered into this program, the first step to complete (before running any inferential statistics) is EDA, which involves computing various descriptive statistics and graphs. Exploratory data analysis is used to examine and get to know your data. Chapters 2, 3, and especially this chapter, focus on

Problem 4.1: Descriptive Statistics for the Ordinal and Scale Variables with SPSS

In this problem, we use all of the HSB variables that we initially labeled as ordinal or scale in the Variable View. With those types of variables, it is important to see if the means make sense (are they close to what you expected?), to examine the dispersion/spread of the data, and to check

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Problem 4.2: Boxplots for One Variable and for Multiple Variables with SPSS

In addition to numerical methods for understanding your data, there are several graphic methods. In Chapter 3, we demonstrated the use of histograms and also frequency polygons (line graphs) to roughly assess normality. The trouble is that visual inspection of histograms can be deceiving because some approximately normal distributions don’t look very much like

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Problem 4.3: Boxplots and Stem-and-Leaf Plots Split by a Dichotomous Variable with SPSS

Now let’s make a boxplot comparing males and females on math achievement. This is similar to what we did in Chapter 3, but here we request statistics and stem-and-leaf plots. 4.3. Create a boxplot for math achievement split by gender. Use these commands: Analyze → Descriptive Statistics → Explore  The Explore window (Fig. 4.5) will

Problem 4.4: Descriptives for Dichotomous Variables with SPSS

Now let’s explore the dichotomous variables. To do this, we do the Descriptives command for each of the dichotomous variables. Once again, we could have done Frequencies, with or without frequency tables, but we chose Descriptives. This time we select fewer statistics because the standard deviation, variance, and skewness values are not very meaningful

Problem 4.5: Frequency Tables for a Few Variables with SPSS

Displaying Frequency tables for variables can help you understand how many participants are in each level of a variable and how much missing data of various types you have. For nominal variables, most descriptive statistics are meaningless. Thus, having a frequency table is usually the best way to understand your nominal variables. We created

Data File Management and Descriptive Statistics with SPSS – Problem 5.1: Count Math Courses Taken

Sometimes you want to know how many items the participants have taken, bought, done, agreed with, and so forth. One time this happens is when the subject is asked to “check all that apply.” In Chapter 2, we could have counted how many aspects of the class assignments (reading, homework, and extra credit) the