C1 Lab

• SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) is a statistical package for the social sciences developed by IBM.
• SPSS Statistics is software for managing data and calculating a wide variety of statistics.
• Missing in SPSS designates certain data values that you want SPSS to ignore when it calculates statistics.
• Response not applicable or answered in SPSS is a data value that you want SPSS to ignore when it calculates statistics.
• Values in SPSS allows you to create value labels, also known as a list of options.
• The SPSS Software can accomplish data analysis through menus and dialog boxes that can give you visual option with each step of your analysis.
• SPSS Statistics has three main windows, plus a MENU BAR at the top, which allow you to see your data, see your statistical output, and see any programming commands you have written.
• The data editor in SPSS Statistics lets you see and manipulate your data and changes you make to your data can be saved permanently.
• Data files are saved with a file type of .SAV (sav) in SPSS Statistics.
• When you close your last data editor in SPSS Statistics, you are shutting down the program.
• To open a different data set in SPSS Statistics, click >FILE>OPEN>DATA.
• Many data sets can be opened simultaneously in SPSS Statistics.
• The output viewer in SPSS Statistics shows you tables of stats output and any graph you create.
• The output viewer in SPSS Statistics also shows the programming language for the commands that you issued (syntax in SPSS jargon,) and error messages.
• The output viewer in SPSS Statistics allows you to edit and print your results.
• The tables of the output viewer in SPSS Statistics are saved (Save or Save As or .spv).
• It is possible to open more than one Output Viewer in SPSS Statistics.
• The active Viewer in SPSS Statistics, marked with a blue plus sign, will receive the results of any command that you issue.
• If you close all the Output Viewers and then issue a new command in the SPSS programming language, the results will be displayed in the active Viewer.
• If you are working with the SPSS programming directly, you will also open a Syntax Editor.
• The Syntax Editor in SPSS Statistics allows you to write, edit, and run commands in the SPSS programming language.
• The Syntax Editor in SPSS Statistics also allows you to see your statistical editor (Output Viewer).
• The first attribute in the variable view is the name, which is how the data column is identified in the programming language and must begin with a letter, and may be made up of other characters, numerals, non-punctuation characters and period, but capitalization is ignored.
• The data editor shows the data values and redefines the characteristics of variables, such as changing the types.
• Data values may be displayed as either the actual value (15000) or as a formatted value.
• A typical example of a dialog box for producing frequency tables is the one used in SPSS.
• The type of file saved by the data editor in SPSS Statistics is .SPV (spv).
• If you return to a dialog box, it opens with all the specifications you last used, allowing you to try a number of variations on your analysis.
• The third attribute in the variable view is the label, which is a longer description that is displayed in place of the variable name.
• Select the variable you want to analyze by clicking them, then click the arrow button, and the variables are moved to the analysis list on the right.
• Formats can also take the form of value labels, for instance, data recorded as 1s and 2’s might be labeled as MALE and FEMALE.
• To bring up this dialog box from the menus, click on Analyze, Descriptive Statistics, Frequencies.
• In variable view, each column of the data view is described by a row of the variable view.
• The second attribute in the variable view is the type, which can be either numeric or string.
• Data values can be edited or added by typing them directly into the data view.
• Commands may be issued either through menus and dialog boxes that invoke the programming language behind the scenes, or by typing the programming language in a syntax editor and running the commands.
• At the bottom of the dialog box, click OK to issue our command to SPSS.
• If you’d prefer to start fresh, you can click the RESET button.
• On the left of the dialog box is a variable selection list with all the variables in your data set.
• In data view, rows represent a unit of observation, the column represents the variable, and each data cell holds a data value.