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Introduction
SPSS® Reference Manual: A guide for market researchers
Prepared by Paul Hartzer
Contents
Introduction
Overview
This guide presents instructions on how to do basic tasks in SPSS. It is intended for casual users of SPSS who want to be able to perform specific tasks quickly. SPSS has many functions that we don't typically use in market research. This document is meant to help you home in on the functions we do use. The GUI descriptions are from SPSS 15, but the differences in the menus are minor between that and SPSS 12.
What is SPSS?
SPSS, the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, is one of the major statistical packages (along with SAS and mTAB, among others). It is used for performing analysis on data files, including taking frequencies of responses, filtering data, creating cross-tabulations, and weighting. In addition, SPSS can do higher-level statistical analysis.
SPSS does have certain limitations, however. Although its processing is far more powerful than Excel, its output is difficult to customize. When working with output, it is typical to copy SPSS output into Excel for formatting to make it presentable to people less familiar with SPSS.
User Interfaces
There are two interfaces in SPSS: The GUI (Graphical User Interface), which is the menu system that Windows users are most familiar with from other software, and syntax files. Nearly everything in SPSS can be done either through the GUI or through syntax. While the choice can often be a matter of personal taste, each has its strengths. Here are some guidelines.
When to use the GUI
The GUI has the following advantages:
When to use syntax files
Syntax files are best used when you want to:
Pasting commands
In reality, SPSS performs its tasks through syntax; the GUI is provided as a convenience for the user. As a result, SPSS provides a simple way to do create most syntax: Through the Paste button, which is available on most menus.
As you begin to use SPSS, it's important to keep an eye towards using the Paste button to save your steps. When you click the Paste button, SPSS places the syntax for what you're doing into a file rather than running it. This is the best of both worlds: It allows you to set up what you want to do in the GUI, and then generate a syntax file on the fly.
Using this guide
This guide is divided into two sections.
The first section is an overview of the basic functions most commonly used in SPSS, showing both the GUI and the syntax method for each task (except when only one route is available). Use the method you're most comfortable with. Also note there may be other ways to perform some of these tasks. Each task assumes that you've already opened SPSS and closed the opening dialog wizard.
The second section provides a listing and some examples of the SPSS syntax commands most commonly used in loading, cleaning, and saving data, as well as information on how to leverage Excel's string formulas for building syntax files. You can use these as a building block to extrapolate towards your own needs, as you become increasingly comfortable with SPSS.
The two sections are designed to be somewhat independent of each other. Depending on your current comfort level, you can start with either.
The main SPSS interface
The main SPSS window shows the data set, and has two views: the Data View and the Variable View. The Data View shows the actual data; it resembles Excel, except that the column headers are the names of the variables. The Variable View lists the variables, including their names, their values, and other information.
Customizing the GUI
Certain aspects of the GUI can be customized. To get to the dialog box, click Edit and select Options.... Here is some information about the more useful settings.
General tab
Variable Lists are the lists of variables that appear in various GUI dialog boxes. Labels are more descriptive than names. Generally, sorting the variables alphabetically will make them easy to find.
The Session Journal keeps information about processing, including errors, encountered during a session. This is useful if you're experiencing an error you can't figure out using the output alone, but most users will never use the journal.
Output Labels tab
Pivot Table Labeling shows whether names, labels, or both are going to be shown. If you're going to be doing your analysis in SPSS, choose both; if you're going to be copying tables into Excel, choose Labels.
Other tabs
The other tabs allow you to further customize how the output looks. Avoid modifying the Scripts tab unless you're an advanced user.
More about syntax files
Syntax files have certain formatting rules that might seem odd to people without programming experience. However, they're easy to learn.
Many SPSS key words have abbreviations. For instance, VAR and VARIABLE are interchangeable.
The width of a space is generally irrelevant to SPSS (with some important exceptions). One space, ten spaces, even a line break: All of these are interpreted the same, as a single space. For this reason, all SPSS commands MUST end in a period.
The exceptions to this rule:
Outside of quotation marks, SPSS doesn't distinguish between lower and upper case. For example, EXECUTE, execute, and Execute are all interpreted the same way. This is also true for variable names.
Either single or double quotation marks can be used for text. However, the same symbol must be used on each side of the text.
Also keep in mind that if text contains an apostrophe, it might cause a problem. Best practice is to remove these apostrophes, but if that's not feasible, use the other mark.
To break a line of text onto two lines, use + at the end of the first line.
Comments are indicated by /* <Comment> */ or by * at the beginning of a line.
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