Using SPSS and PASW

SPSS or "Statistical Package for the Social Sciences" is a software program widely used in the social sciences for conducting statistical analysis of data. The company that produced the software was SPSS, Inc., but it was bought in 2008 by IBM. During the transition, the software package was renamed to PASW, but has since been renamed back to SPSS.

This book is a rudimentary introduction to the use of SPSS for basic statistical analysis. The book is written with a focus on social scientific analysis in mind (particularly Sociology). Part I of the book covers basic operations within SPSS, from installing it to manipulating data. Part II illustrates how to do a variety of basic statistical tests. This book was written by beginners for beginners. More advanced users of SPSS should consider a different text or the manual that comes with the program itself.

Throughout this text, example data are from a nationally representative sample of Genetic Counselors collected in 2006. The data have been anonymized such that individual Genetic Counselors are not identifiable. If you'd like to use the example data set to learn how to use SPSS, please contact the primary author via his talk page.

Part of the Social Sciences Collection

Table of Contents

• Basic Operation
  • Installing SPSS
  • Opening SPSS
  • Opening a dataset
  • Understanding the Data View
  • Understanding the Variable View
    • Understanding the Measure Column
    • Understanding the missing values dialog
  • Understanding the Output Window
  • Changing Preferences to Include Syntax in Output
  • Changing Preferences to Order Lists Alphabetically
  • Recoding Variables
    • Recoding Variables: from scale to category
  • Computing Variables
  • Creating New Variables
  • Sorting Variables
  • Creating Charts and Graphs
  • Moving Variables
• Data Analysis
  • Frequencies
  • Descriptives
  • Confidence Intervals
  • Single Sample Means Tests
  • Independent Samples t-test
  • Paired Samples t-test
  • Chi-Square
  • ANOVA
  • General Linear Models
  • Correlation
  • Ordinary Least Squares Regression
  • SPSS syntax

Contributors

This book was originally created by students in a Sociology Statistics class at the University of Tampa in Spring 2010 although small modifications and additions have been made since. The students who contributed to this text include: Caitlin McGrath, Sarah Friswell, Jennifer Gadarowski, Clarine Ovando-LaCroux, Megan Hauf, Gen Guzman, Alison Moser, Victoria Blyde, Kimberly Duggan, Brittany Harder, Kristen Mraz, Damian Patrinostro, Joseph Ranalli, Lauren Takemoto, Sheena Wright, and Mathew Zarzana. Students are credited within the chapters they wrote. If there is no attribution to a student within a chapter, that chapter was written by the course instructor, Ryan T. Cragun.

Other Useful Tutorials

SPSS Intros and Tutorials

Notes

Continue to /Installing SPSS >>