Introduction to SPSS

Ms. Fatima Salman

Psychology
Department
Lahore Garrison
University
Topics we will cover
today

• SPSS at a glance
• Basic Structure of SPSS
• Descriptive Statistics
• The basic analysis in SPSS
Introduction: What is SPSS?

• SPSS is an acronym of Statistical Package

for the Social Science.

• One of the most popular statistical

packages which can perform highly
complex data analysis with simple
instructions
 Opening SPSS
• Start → All Programs → IBM SPSS Inc→ SPSS 26.0 →
 How to open SPSS
• Double click the SPSS icon on your
computer
Basic structure of
SPSS
• There are two different windows in SPSS

• 1st – Data Editor Window - shows data in two

forms
– Data view
– Variable view

• 2nd – Output viewer Window – shows results of

data analysis

• *You must save the data editor window and

output viewer window separately. Make sure to
save both if you want to save your changes in
data or analysis.*
The two Windows: Data Editor
• Data Editor
Spreadsheet-like system for defining, entering, editing,
and displaying data. Extension of the saved file will be
“sav.”
The two Windows: Output Viewer
• Output Viewer
Displays output and errors. Extension of the saved file will
be “spv.”
 Opening SPSS
• The default window will have the data editor
• There are two sheets in the window:
1. Data view 2. Variable view
Data View window
• The Data View window
This sheet is visible when you first open the Data Editor
and this sheet contains the data
• Click on the tab labeled Variable View

Click
 Variable View window
• This sheet contains information about the data set that is stored
with the dataset
• Name
– The first character of the variable name must be alphabetic
– Variable names must be unique, and have to be less than 64
characters.
– Spaces are NOT allowed.
Variable View window: Type
• Type
– Click on the ‘type’ box. The two basic types of variables
that you will use are numeric and string. This column
enables you to specify the type of variable.
 Variable View window: Width
• Width
– Width allows you to determine the number of
characters SPSS will allow to be entered for the
variable
Variable View window: Decimals
• Decimals
– Number of decimals
– It has to be less than or equal to 16

3.14159265
 Variable View window: Label
• Label
– You can specify the details of the variable
– You can write characters with spaces up to 256
characters
Variable View window: Values
• Values
– This is used and to suggest which numbers
represent which categories when the
variable represents a category
Defining the value labels
• Click the cell in the values column as shown below
• For the value, and the label, you can put up to 60
characters.
• After defining the values click add and then click OK.

Click
Missing
• Defines missing values
• The values are excluded from
some analysis
• Options:
– Up to 3 discrete missing values
– A range of missing values plus one
discrete missing value
Click in the Missing Values column to obtain the dialogue box below.
Enter the value 999 for Age.
Missing values added
 Columns and Align
• Columns sets the amount of space
reserved to display the contents of the
variable in Data View; generally the
default value is adequate
• Align sets whether the contents of the
variable appear on the left, centre or
right of the cell in Data View
• Numeric variables are right-hand
justified by default and string variables
left-hand justified by default; the
defaults are generally adequate
Measure
• Levels of measurement:
– Nominal
– Ordinal
– Interval
– Ratio
• In SPSS, interval and ratio are designated
together as Scale
• The default for string variables is Nominal
• The default for numeric variables is Scale
Returning to Data View, the first two column headings will reflect the
two variables created: ID and Age. Here the first six observations have
been entered.
Exercise: define the necessary variables and enter the
following data
Saving the file
• The file must always be saved in
order to save the work that has
been done to date:
– File/Save
– Move to the target directory
– Enter a file name
– Save
Practice 1
• How would you put the following information into
SPSS?
Name Gender Height
JAUNITA 2 5.4
SALLY 2 5.3
DONNA 2 5.6
SABRINA 2 5.7
JOHN 1 5.7
MARK 1 6
ERIC 1 6.4
BRUCE 1 5.9

Value = 1 represents Male and Value = 2 represents Female

Practice 1 (Solution Sample)

Click
Click
Saving the data
• To save the data file you created simply click ‘file’ and
click ‘save as.’ You can save the file in different forms
by clicking “Save as type.”

Click
Sorting the data
• Click ‘Data’ and then click Sort Cases
 Sorting the data (cont’d)
• Double Click ‘Name of the students.’ Then click
ok.

Click

Click
Practice 2
Demographics
Age
Gender: Men Women
Marital Status: Married Unmarried
Education PhD PhD Scholar MS/Mphil
Years of experience

Study variables
Burnout
Organizational Performance
Turnover intentions
I Age Gend Marital Educati Years Burno Organizat Turnover
D er Status on of ut ional Intention
Experi Performa
ence nce
1 32 Male Married PhD 8 3.5 8 Low

2 28 Femal Unmarr PhD 4 2.8 7 Moderate

e ied Scholar
3 35 Male Married MS/ 6 4.2 6 High
MPhil
4 27 Femal Unmarr PhD 3 2.1 7 Low
e ied Scholar
5 40 Male Married PhD 12 3.9 9 Moderate

6 31 Femal Unmarr MS/ 5 2.5 6 High

e ied MPhil
7 33 Male Married MS/ 7 4.5 7 Low
MPhil
8 29 Femal Unmarr PhD 4 3.1 6 Moderate
e ied Scholar
9 37 Male Married PhD 10 3.8 8 High

1 26 Femal Unmarr MS/ 2 2.9 5 Low

0 e ied MPhil

calculate the mean, median, mode, standard deviation, and generating

frequency distributions
 Practice 3

calculate the mean, median, mode, standard deviation, and

generating frequency distributions
 MERGE FILES
• There are times when it is necessary to merge different data
fi les. SPSS allows you to merge files by adding additional
cases at the end of your fi le, or to merge additional
variables for each of the cases in an existing data fi le (e.g.
when Time 2 data becomes available). This second option is
also useful when you have Excel fi les with information
spread across different spreadsheets that need to be
merged by ID.
• To merge files by adding cases
• This procedure will allow you to merge fi les that have the
same variables, but different cases; for example, where the
same information is recorded at two different sites (e.g.
clinic settings) or entered by two different people. The two
files should have the same variable names for the data you
wish to merge (although other non-equivalent information
can exist in each file).
2. To merge files by adding variables
•This option is useful when adding additional information for each
case (with the matching IDs). Each file must start with the ID
number.
The basic analysis
 Opening the sample data
• Open ‘Employee data.sav’ from the SPSS
– Go to “File,” “Open,” and Click Data
Frequencies
• Click ‘Analyze,’ ‘Descriptive statistics,’ then
click ‘Frequencies’
Frequencies
• Click gender and put it into the variable box.
• Click ‘Charts.’
• Then click ‘Bar charts’ and click ‘Continue.’

Click Click
Frequencies
• Finally Click OK in the Frequencies box.

Click
 Descriptives
• Click ‘Analyze,’ ‘Descriptive statistics,’ then
click ‘Descriptives…’
• Click ‘Educational level’ and ‘Beginning
Salary,’ and put it into the variable box.
• Click Options

Click
 Descriptives
• The options allows you to analyze other
descriptive statistics besides the mean and Std.
• Click ‘variance’ and ‘kurtosis’
• Finally click ‘Continue’

Click

Click
 Descriptives
• Finally Click OK in the Descriptives box. You will
be able to see the result of the analysis.
 What we have
learned!

• SPSS at a glance
• Basic Structure of SPSS
• Descriptive Statistics: –
frequencies, descriptive
statistics
Any Questions?