SPSS tutorial: The most important basics of data analysis
In this tutorial we give you an overview of the most important basics of data analysis in SPSS. SPSS is a statistical and analysis software that you can use to evaluate surveys, for example.
SPSS Basics Tutorial: The Variables
As soon as you open the program, your worksheet appears, which is shown as a table. The lines represent individual cases in a survey, for example: different people. The columns correspond to the different variables. Variables are, for example, characteristics such as age or degree.
- Double click on one of the "var" lines and open the variable view.
- Now go to "Data" and "Insert Variable" to create a variable. A variable name can have a maximum of 65 characters and must begin with a letter.
SPSS Basics Tutorial: The Variable Types
SPSS offers various types of variables. You can set this by clicking on "Type".
- Numeric: This type contains numerical values that can be processed mathematically. SPSS has 16 decimal places. You can also work with integer values by entering 0 in "Decimals".
- String: This type is a string and can contain different characters. These cannot be processed mathematically and represent a text.
SPSS Basics Tutorial: The Labels
Labels describe the characteristics of the variables and can be up to 255 characters long, and contain any combination of letters and numbers.
- If you have defined a variable as "gender", for example, you can now specify a label. To do this, double-click on "Label" and name it like the variable as "Gender".
- You can now specify various values under "Values". In our example, male or female. Now assign numerical values, for example: 1 = female, 2 = male and 0 = not specified.
- Confirm this setting with "Ok".
SPSS Basics Tutorial: The Measurement Levels
You can now assign different measurement levels to the variables. SPSS offers 2 different types, which you can select accordingly.
- Double-click "Measure". Now choose between nominal, ordinal and metric.
- Nominal: The characteristics of the variable are not empirical or numerical. This means that you cannot carry out arithmetic operations with this type. The numbers only serve to identify the corresponding property.
- Ordinal: Ordinal variables are ranked. This ranking corresponds to that of the properties. For example 1 = underweight, 2 = normal weight, 3 = overweight. However, version 1 is not twice as high as version 2.
- Metric: The difference in values corresponds to reality. For example, weight in kg: a 50 kg man (weight = 50) and a 25 kg woman (weight = 25 kg). This information can be used to form a meaningful mean, unlike nominal and ordinally scaled levels.
SPSS Basics Tutorial: The Missing Values
You have distributed a questionnaire and several have not been filled in completely or "nonsensical" information has been given. You can take this into account in SPSS.
- System-Defined Missing Values: As soon as you do not fill in fields, SPSS treats them as system-defined missing values. These are marked with a dot.
- Custom Missing Values: If you want to provide specific reasons for the lack of a value, you should specify a custom missing value. These values count as "missing" but can be evaluated individually in a separate analysis.
- Click on "Missing" in the variable view to open the settings window and define the user-defined missing values.
SPSS Basics Tutorial: The Frequencies
Now that you have completely filled out the table with your survey results, you can carry out a frequency analysis.
- Go to "Analysis" in the menu, then to "Descriptive statistics" and then to "Frequencies".
- You can now count the frequencies in the "Frequencies" window. Select the variables from the list and transfer them using the triangle in the variable field.
- Confirm with OK". You will now receive the frequency evaluation in the output window.
- In the frequency table, a distinction is made between "valid", meaning valid values and "missing", meaning missing values. Both values are summed up independently of one another and then completely - "Total".
SPSS Basics Tutorial: Further statistical values
In addition to the frequency, you can of course also calculate other statistical values such as the median, the variance or the modal value.
$config[ads_text6] not found- Go to "Analyze" in the menu, then to "Descriptive Statistics" and to "Frequencies". Now you can choose "Statistics" to open another window.
- Now you can fill in the individual information according to your wishes: quantiles (quartiles), separating (cut points), percentiles (percentiles), mean (mean), median, modal (mode), sum (sum), standard deviation (St. deviation ), Variance, range, standard fields (SE mean) and distribution.
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