SPSS Step-by-Step

Tutorial: Part 1

For SPSS Version 11.5

© DataStep Development 2004
Table of Contents

1 SPSS Step-by-Step 5
Introduction 5
Installing the Data 6
Installing files from the Internet 6
Installing files from the diskette 6
Introducing the interface 6
The data view 7
The variable view 7
The output view 7
The draft view 10
The syntax view 10
What the heck is a crosstab? 12

2 Entering and modifying

data 13
Creating the data definitions: the variable view 13
Variable types 13

SPSS Step-by-Step 3
 Variable names and labels 15
Missing values 15
Non-numeric numbers, or when is a number not a
number? 15
Binary variables 15
Creating a new data set 16
Getting help in creating data sets and defining
variables 22
Creating primary reference lists 24
Frequencies 24
Descriptive statistics: descriptives (univariate) 25
Recodes and Transformations 26
Backup the original file 26
Recoding existing variables 27
Recode income data 27
Recoding variables revisited 37
The one exception in recoding variables 37
The other exception 37

3 Charting your data 39

Using the automated chart function 40
Using the Interactive Chart function 42
Creating a chart from scratch 45

4 SPSS Step-by-Step
1 SPSS Step-by-Step

I nt roduc t ion
SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) has now been in development for
more than thirty years. Originally developed as a programming language for con-
ducting statistical analysis, it has grown into a complex and powerful application
with now uses both a graphical and a syntactical interface and provides dozens of
functions for managing, analyzing, and presenting data. Its statistical capabilities
alone range from simple perentages to complex analyses of variance, multiple
regressions, and general linear models. You can use data ranging from simple inte-
gers or binary variables to multiple response or logrithmic variables. SPSS also
provides extensive data management functions, along with a complex and powerful
programming language. In fact, a search at Amazon.com for SPSS books returns
2,034 listings as of March 15, 2004.

In these two sessions, you won’t become an SPSS or data analysis guru, but you
will learn your way around the program, exploring the various functions for manag-
ing your data, conducting statistical analyses, creating tables and charts, and pre-
paring your output for incorporation into external files such as spreadsheets and
word processors. Most importantly, you’ll learn how to learn more about SPSS.

SPSS Step-by-Step 5
 Installing the Data

I nst a lling t he Dat a

The data for this tutorial is available on floppy disk (if you received this tutorial as
part of a class) and on the Internet. Use one of the following procedures to install
the data on your computer.

Installing files from the Internet

Before you begin to download the files, create a new folder on your computer’s
hard disk named SPSSTutorialData. When you download the files, you’ll save
them in this directory.

1. Go to ftp.datastep.com. Do not type “www” or “http://”.

2. When prompted for a user name, enter: SPSS
3. For the password, enter: tutorial.
4. To download each file, click it once, press Ctrl-C or select Edit > Copy from the
menu.
5. Switch to a window for your computer and save the file in the directory named
SPSSTutorialData. To do so, open the folder and press Ctrl-V or select Edit >
Paste from the menu.
6. Once you have downloaded all the files, close the Internet browser.

Installing files from the diskette

1. With the diskette in the floppy drive, open a window for the C drive on your
computer (or any other drive where you want to save the data files).
2. Create a new folder named SPSSTutorialData.
3. Copy the files from the floppy disk to the SPSSTutorialData folder by copying
and pasting or by dragging.

I nt roduc ing t he int e rfa c e

When you use SPSS, you work in one of several windows: the data view, the vari-
able view, the output view, the draft output view, and the script view. Eventually
you’ll also use the syntax editor (think: code) to save or refine your queries.

6 SPSS Step-by-Step
Introducing the interface

The data view

The data view displays your actual data and any new variables you have created
(we’ll discuss creating new variables later on in this session).
1. From the menu, select File > Open > Data.
2. In the Open File window, navigate to C:\SPSSTutorialData\Employee data.sav
and open it by double-clicking. SPSS opens a window that looks like a standard
spreadsheet. In SPSS, columns are used for variables, while rows are used for
cases (also called records).
3. Press Ctrl-Home to move to the first cell of the data view.
4. Press Ctrl-End to move to the last cell of the data view.
5. Press Ctrl-Home again to move back to the first cell.

The variable view

‘At the bottom of the data window, you’ll notice a tab labeled Variable View. The
variable view window contains the definitions of each variable in your data set,
including its name, type, label, size, alignment, and other information.
1. Click the Variable View tab.
2. Review the information in the rows for each variable.

Note: While the variables are listed as columns in the Data View, they are listed as
rows in the Variable View. In the Variable View, each column is a kind of
variable itself, containing a specific type of information.

3. Click the Data View tab to return to the data.

4. Double-click the label id at the top of the id column. Notice that double-clicking
the name of a variable in the data view opens the variable view window to the
definition of that variable.
5. Click the data view tab again.

The output view

The output window is where you see the results of your various queries such as fre-
quency distributions, cross-tabs, statistical tests, and charts. If you’ve worked with
Excel, you’re probably used to seeing all your work on one page, charts, data, and
calculations. In SPSS, each window handles a separate task. The output window is
where you see your results.

SPSS Step-by-Step 7
 Introducing the interface

Try it:
1. From the menu, select Analyze > Descriptive Statistics> Crosstabs.
2. Click once on Employment, then click the small right arrow next to Rows to
move the variable to the Rows pane (Figure 1).

FIGURE 1. Moving a variable to the Rows pane

3. Click Gender, then click the small right arrow next to Columns to move the
Gender variable to the Columns pane. (Figure 2).

8 SPSS Step-by-Step
Introducing the interface

FIGURE 2. Selecting a column variable

4. Click Display clustered bar charts (Figure 3).

FIGURE 3. Selecting clustered bar charts

click here to display

the clustered bar
charts

SPSS Step-by-Step 9
 Introducing the interface

5. Click OK. SPSS brings the output window to the front displaying two tables
and the clustered bar chart you requested. Take a moment to review the contents
of the tables and the chart. Notice that the red arrow next to the title Crosstabs
corresponds to the Crosstabs icon in the left pane of the window. The left pane
displays the contents of the right pane and is a convenient method of moving
around among the various output you’ll be generating.

Note: In some cases, you may see asterisks instead of numbers in a table cell.
Asterisks indicate that the current column is too narrow to display the com-
plete number. Widen the column by dragging its margin to the right.

The draft view

The draft view is where you can look at output as it is generated for printing. The
draft view does not contain the contents pane or some of the notations present in the
output pane.

Try it:
1. From the menu, select File > New > Draft Output. SPSS opens a Draft Output
window that contains its own menu.
2. From the menu, select Analyze > Descriptive Statistics > Crosstabs. Notice that
the dialog box opens with your previous selections.
3. Click OK. From here you can select charts or tables, copy them, and paste them
into other applications like spreadsheets or word processors.

Note: If you want to maintain the correct spacing of the tables, use a non-propor-
tional font like Courier New.

The syntax view

SPSS has never lost its roots as a programming language. Although most of your
daily work will be done using the graphical interface, from time to time you’ll want
to make sure that you can exactly reproduce the steps involved in arriving at certain
conclusions. In other words, you’ll want to replicate your analysis. The best method
of preserving the exact steps of a particular analysis is the syntax view. In the syn-
tax view, you’ll preserve the code used to generate any set of tables or charts.

Syntax is basically the actual computer code that produces a specific output. It
looks like this:

10 SPSS Step-by-Step
Introducing the interface

CROSSTABS
/TABLES=jobcat BY gender
/FORMAT= AVALUE TABLES
/CELLS= COUNT
/BARCHART .
In the code shown above, SPSS is instructed to create crosstabs, using the variable
jobcat, sorting the crosstabs by gender using a specific format, to put a count into
each cell, and then to create a corresponding barchart.

Note: Preserving the steps you take in arriving at a conclusion is especially impor-
tant if you are writing for publication, peer review, or any other situation in
which others might want to test your conclusions.

In the next steps, you’ll create a simple chart and frequency distribution, save the
syntax and then recreate the chart and frequency distribution by running the saved
syntax.

Try it:
1. From the menu, select Analyze > Descriptive Statistics > Crosstabs. Notice that
your previous selections are still present.
2. This time, instead of clicking OK, click Paste.
3. SPSS opens the Syntax Editor with the code you just pasted.
When you select Paste instead of OK in dialog boxes like the Crosstabs box,
the code generated by the function is pasted into the Syntax Editor. If you
wanted, you could generate all your output from the syntax window alone. Gen-
erally, however, you will probably work with your data and output until they are
just the way you want them, then repeat the steps you took and paste the code
into the syntax editor. You can then run the syntax at any time to recreate the
output.
4. If the cursor is not already located somewhere in the syntax, click anywhere in
the word CROSSTABS, then click the small right arrow on the toolbar or select
from the menu Run > Current. SPSS opens the draft output window with the
same chart you created using the menu commands. This time, however, you cre-
ated the output by running the syntax (code) you created with the Paste func-
tion. Notice that you can scroll up to the previous output you created using the
menu commands.

SPSS Step-by-Step 11
 What the heck is a crosstab?

What t he he ck is a c rosst a b?
A crosstab (short for cross tabulation) is a summary table, with the emphasis on
summary. Here’s an example:

Employment Category * Gender Crosstabulation

Count
Gender
Female Male Total
Employment Clerical 206 157 363
Category Custodial 0 27 27
Manager 10 74 84
Total 216 258 474

Notice that the rows contain one set of categories (employment category) while the
columns contain another (gender). In this crosstab, the cells contain counts, but in
others you can use percentages, means, standard deviations, and the like.

Here’s the important part: crosstabs are used for only categorical (discrete) data,
that is, groups like employment categories or gender. You can’t use a crosstab for
continuous data like temperature or dosage or income. BUT, you can change data
like temperature or dosage or income into categories by creating groups, like
income less than $25,000, income between 25000 and 49999, income 50000 or
higher. We’ll discuss these data conversions known as transformations or recodes
later. For now, you just need to understand that crosstabs deal with groups or cate-
gories.

Now that you’ve seen the various windows you’ll be using, we’ll move on to the
techniques you’ll use in SPSS for managing your data files.

12 SPSS Step-by-Step
2 Entering and modifying data

In this section, you’ll learn how to define variables and create a data set from
scratch.

Cre at ing t he dat a de finit ions: t he va ria ble vie w

It’s impossible to talk about SPSS (or any analysis program) without talking about
data and types of data. So here goes. Each particular type of information (such as
income or gender or temperature or dosage) is called a variable. You can have vari-
ous types of variables such as numeric variables (any number that you can use in a
calculation), string variables (text or numbers that you can’t use in calculations),
currency (numbers with two and only two decimal places) and variables with spe-
cific formats.

Variable types

SPSS uses (and insists upon) what are called strongly typed variables. Strongly
typed means that you must define your variables according to the type of data they
will contain. You can use any of the following types, as defined by the SPSS Help
file.

SPSS Step-by-Step 13
 Creating the data definitions: the variable view

• Numeric. A variable whose values are numbers. Values are displayed in stan-
dard numeric format. The Data Editor accepts numeric values in standard for-
mat or in scientific notation.
• Comma. A numeric variable whose values are displayed with commas delimit-
ing every three places, and with the period as a decimal delimiter. The Data Edi-
tor accepts numeric values for comma variables with or without commas; or in
scientific notation.
• Dot. A numeric variable whose values are displayed with periods delimiting
every three places, and with the comma as a decimal delimiter. The Data Editor
accepts numeric values for dot variables with or without dots; or in scientific
notation. (Sometimes known as European notation.)
• Scientific notation. A numeric variable whose values are displayed with an
embedded E and a signed power-of-ten exponent. The Data Editor accepts
numeric values for such variables with or without an exponent. The exponent
can be preceded either by E or D with an optional sign, or by the sign alone--for
example, 123, 1.23E2, 1.23D2, 1.23E+2, and even 1.23+2.
• Date. A numeric variable whose values are displayed in one of several calendar-
date or clock-time formats. Select a format from the list. You can enter dates
with slashes, hyphens, periods, commas, or blank spaces as delimiters. The cen-
tury range for 2-digit year values is determined by your Options settings (from
the Edit menu, choose Options and click the Data tab).
• Custom currency. A numeric variable whose values are displayed in one of the
custom currency formats that you have defined in the Currency tab of the
Options dialog box. Defined custom currency characters cannot be used in data
entry but are displayed in the Data Editor.
• String. Values of a string variable are not numeric, and hence not used in calcu-
lations. They can contain any characters up to the defined length. Uppercase and
lowercase letters are considered distinct. Also known as an alphanumeric vari-
able.1

Because SPSS uses strongly typed variables, you have to make sure that all the data
in any field (variable) is consistent.

1. SPSS Base System Version 11.5 Help.

14 SPSS Step-by-Step
Creating the data definitions: the variable view

Variable names and labels

Forget all the nice conveniences you find in Windows and the Mac for handling
long, interesting file names, or even the leniency that some database applications
provide in naming fields. In SPSS, variable names are eight characters, period. And
no funny characters like spaces or hyphens. Here are the rules:
• Names must begin with a letter.
• Names must not end with a period.
• Names must be no longer than eight characters.
• Names cannot contain blanks or special characters.
• Names must be unique.
• Names are not case sensitive. It doesn’t matter if you call your variable CLI-
ENT, client, or CliENt. It’s all client to SPSS.

Missing values
If you do not enter any data in a field, it will be considered as missing and SPSS
will enter a period for you.

Non-numeric numbers, or when is a number not a number?

Some numbers aren’t really numbers. That is, they’re numbers but you can’t use
them in mathematical calculations. Take a phone number, for example, or an
account number or a zip code. You can sort them, but you can’t add or subtract or
multiply them. Well, you could, but the result would be meaningless. In essence,
these numbers are actually just text which happens to be numeric. A good example
is an address, which contains both numbers and text. We refer to these variables as
string or text variables.

Binary variables
Binary variables are a special subgroup of numeric variables. Sometimes you treat
them as strings and sometimes you treat them as numeric. For example, yes/no,
male/female, and 0/1 are all binary variables. That is, they have two and only two
possible values. Obviously, you can’t do a calculation on yes/no or male/female,
BUT and this is a very big and very important BUT, you can recode these variables
into numeric values, like assigning a value of 0 to female and 1 to male.

SPSS Step-by-Step 15
 Creating a new data set

Recoding binary variables is a critically important part of data analysis. Suppose,

for example, that all you want to know is whether a specific event occurred. For
example, suppose you want to know whether a client ever applied for welfare. As it
happens, the data set you’re using contains the date when each person applied for
welfare for the first time, if they ever did; if they didn’t the field is blank. Using this
date, you can create a new variable called, say, welfapp that contains a 1 if there is
any value in the first welfare application field and a 0 if there isn’t. Now you have a
simple value (0 or 1) that you can use for further calculations or subsetting.

Let’s get back to the male/female issue for a moment. Say you have recoded the
variable into a 0 for female and a 1 for male. If you calculate an average (mean) for
this variable, what you now have is a proportion. Say the average of your new vari-
able is .45. You now know that there are somewhat more men than women in your
population. In other words, you have calculated a proportion.

Cre at ing a ne w dat a se t

If you’re doing original research or, in our case, creating databases for clients, there
comes a time when you have to create your own data file from scratch. In this task,
you’ll create a new data set, define a set of variables, and then enter some data in
the variables. You’ll also create some automatic data entry constraints to improve
the accuracy of your data entry.

In this task, you will create four types of variables: numeric, date, string, and
binary.
1. From the menu, select File > New > Data. If you’re asked to save the contents
of the current file, click No.
2. When the new file opens in the Data View, click the Variable View tab at the
bottom of the window.
3. With the cursor in the Name column on the first row (referring to the name of
the variable) type:

clientid
4. In the Type column, click the build button (“build button” is actually a
Microsoft term, but since SPSS’s documentation doesn’t give the button a
name, we’ll use “build”) to open the Variable Type dialog box. (Figure 4)

16 SPSS Step-by-Step
Creating a new data set

FIGURE 4. Variable type dialog box

5. Select (click) String. Notice that you can now define the length of the variable
(Figure 5).

FIGURE 5. Defining the length of a string variable

6. Select all the text in the Characters field and type:

14
7. Click OK. The dialog box closes and the variable is now set to a length of 14
with no decimal places.
8. Press tab or Enter three times to move to the label column.
9. Type:

Client ID
This is the label that will appear on all output and in dialog boxes like those you
used in crosstabs and charts.

SPSS Step-by-Step 17
 Creating a new data set

10. Press tab or Enter three times to move to the “columns” column. “Columns”
defines the width of the display of the variable, not its actual contents. The dis-
play width affects how the column will be displayed in output like crosstabs and
pivot tables.
11. Select all the text in the “columns” column and type:

14
12. Leave the remaining columns as they are, with left alignment and “nominal” as
the measure.
13. On the next row, click in the name column and type:

gender
14. Press tab or Enter to move to the next column.
15. Click the build button to open the Variable Type dialog box.
16. Select String and click OK to accept the width.
17. Click in the Label column for gender and type:

Gender
Notice that in the variable labels, you can use upper and lower case as well as
spaces and punctuation.
18. Press tab or Enter to move to the Values column.
19. Click the build button in the Values column to open the Value Labels window
(Figure 6).

FIGURE 6. Value labels window

Note: Variable labels determine how the name of the variable is displayed in out-
put. Value labels determine how each value is displayed. Thus, setting a

18 SPSS Step-by-Step
Creating a new data set

label of “Female” for “f” in the gender variable instructs SPSS to display
“Female” as a column heading for all cases with a value of f in gender.

20. In the Value field, type:

f
21. In the Value Label field, type:

Female
22. Click Add.
23. In the Value field, type:

m
24. In the Value Label field, type:

Male
25. Click Add.
26. The Value Labels window should now look like Figure 7.

FIGURE 7. Completed Value Labels window

27. Click OK.

28. On the next row, click in the Name column and type:

employed
29. Press tab or Enter or click in the Type field.
30. Click the build button to open the Variable Type window.
31. Employed is going to be a numeric, binary variable, so leave numeric selected,
but change Width to 1 and Decimal Places to 0.

SPSS Step-by-Step 19
 Creating a new data set

32. Click OK.

33. Tab to or click in the Label field and type:

Employed year-end
34. Press tab or Enter to move to the Values field and click the Build Button.
35. In the Value field, type:

1
36. In the Value Label field, type:

Yes
37. Click Add.
38. In the Value field, type:

0
39. In the Value Label field, type:

No
40. Click Add.
41. Click OK.
42. On the next row, click in the Name field and type:

nextelig
43. Press tab or Enter or click in the Type field and click the build button to open
the Variable Type window.
44. Select Date by clicking it.
45. In the pane to the right, select the date format mm/dd/yyyy as in Figure 8.

FIGURE 8. Selecting a date format

20 SPSS Step-by-Step
Creating a new data set

46. Click OK.

47. Tab to or click in the Label field and type:

Next eligibility date

48. Tab to or click in the columns field and set the column with to 12.
49. From the menu, select File > Save As.
50. Navigate to the A:\ drive and name the file TestData.sav.
51. Click OK.
52. Click the Data View tab. Notice that you now have four columns in which
you’ll enter data for each record.
53. On the first row, click in the clientid column and type:

4839209
54. In the gender column, type:

f
55. Press tab. Notice that when you leave the field, SPSS updates the field to the
value label you assigned for f.
56. In the Employed field, click the drop-down arrow and select Yes.
57. In the nextelig field, type 4/1/2004.
58. Use the following table to complete the data entry for this file.

clientid gender employed nextelig

5533990 m No 6/1/2004
5938209 f Yes 4/15/2004
9583902 m Yes 6/1/2004

You have now seen how you can define variables, assign labels to both vari-
ables and values, and define constraints that will control the type of data that
can be entered. In future research, you’ll probably receive a file that has already
been entered in another application such as Access, Excel, or some other appli-
cation. If you’re doing your own data entry in SPSS, however, you should be
aware of its data entry capabilities.

SPSS Step-by-Step 21
 Getting help in creating data sets and defining variables

Ge t t ing he lp in c re at ing dat a se t s a nd de fining

va ria ble s
Now that you have had some practice in creating a data set, let’s review the kind of
help SPSS provides to answer your questions.
1. From the menu, select Help > Topics.
2. On the Index tab, click in the field named: Type in the keyword to find:
3. Type:

variable attri
4. Double-click the highlighted text in the list (Variable attributes) to display the
topics found.
5. SPSS opens the Topics Found window with Applying Variable Definition
Attributes highlighted.
6. Click Display.
7. The Help window is updated to this topic (Figure 9).

22 SPSS Step-by-Step
Getting help in creating data sets and defining variables

FIGURE 9. Help window for Applying Variable Definition Attributes

click one of the highlighted topics for more information

8. Click the highlighted item Displaying or Defining Variable Attributes.

9. When the window is updated, click Show Me. SPSS now opens the tutorial
window that is included as part of the application. Any time you see Show Me
in a help window, you can click it to see that specific section of the tutorial.
10. Click the Next arrow a few times to see how the steps are illustrated.
11. Close the Show Me window (the Internet Explorer window) to return to the
standard help window.
12. Under Related Topics, click Value Labels. As you can see, you can follow the
links in the help file, start a new search, or select any of the topics listed on the
left to move around in the SPSS Help system.
13. Close the help window.
14. From the menu, select File > Open > Data.
15. Navigate to the Employee data.sav file on the floppy disk and open it.

SPSS Step-by-Step 23
 Creating primary reference lists

Cre at ing prim a r y re fe re nc e list s

There is one set of outputs you’ll create that is more important than anything else,
and that is the set of primary references. Primary references describe your overall
data set. In other words, how many in all? How many in each category? What are
the maximums and minimums? Means? Standard deviations? Here’s our rule: list
out the summaries and put them somewhere where you refer to them quickly.

You may not always want to print out all the details of your data set. For example,
printing out every single income for a data set of one million people, would not be
useful, economical, or nice to either your printer or the trees. So here are the basic
rules: print frequencies for categorical variables and descriptive (also called
univariate) statistics for continuous variables.

In this exercise, we’ll use the sample Employee dat.sav file.

Frequencies
1. If it’s not already open, open the Employee dat.sav file by selecting File > Open
and navigating to C:\SPSSTutorialData\Employee data.sav.
2. From the menu, select File > New > Draft Output.
3. From the menu, select Analyze > Descriptive Statistics > Frequencies.
4. Double-click Gender, Employment Category, and Minority Classification to
move them to the Variables list.
5. Click the check box labeled Display frequency tables.
6. Click Statistics.
7. Make sure all the check boxes are cleared (not checked).
8. Click Continue.
9. Click Charts.
10. If it is not already selected, select None by clicking it.
11. Click Continue.
12. Click OK.
13. From the menu, select File > Save As.
14. Navigate to C:\SPSSTutorialData\ and save the file as AllFreqs.

When you’re working with your own file, follow these steps, then print the output
so you’ll have it handy.

24 SPSS Step-by-Step
Creating primary reference lists

Descriptive statistics: descriptives (univariate)

The next step is to print the descriptive or univariate statistics for the continuous
variables.
1. From the menu, select File > New > Draft Output.
2. From the menu, select Analyze > Descriptive Statistics > Descriptives.
3. Click Reset to clear any previous selections.
4. Double-click Current Salary, Beginning Salary, Months since Hire, and Previ-
ous Experience to move them to the Variables list.
5. Click Options.
6. In the Descriptives: Options window, click Mean, Std. deviation, Variance,
Range, Minimum, Maximum, Kurtosis, and Skewness (Figure 10).

FIGURE 10. Selected measures for Options

7. Click Continue.
8. Click OK.
9. When the resulting table is displayed, notice that the variables you selected are
listed as rows, while the statistics are listed in columns.
10. From the menu, select File > Save As.
11. Navigate to C:\SPSSTutorialData\ and save the file as AllDescriptives.
12. Notice that the statistic Range displays the distance between the minimum and
maximum.

SPSS Step-by-Step 25
 Recodes and Transformations

When you are working with your own file, be sure to print this output and save it
someplace handy (we use binders for, well, just about everything). These two print-
outs, frequencies and descriptives give you a picture of the overall shape of your
data.

Re c ode s a nd Tra nsfor m at ions

Sooner or later, no matter how carefully you planned your data design, you’ll prob-
ably want to work with some variables in different forms. If you collected income
or age data, for example, you might want to group the continuous variables into cat-
egories. Or you might want to create a variable that combines various conditions,
say, all minority managers by gender. This type of data manipulation is called
transforming or recoding. In this exercise, you’ll create several new variables, some
that indicate multiple conditions and some that recode continuous variables into
categorical variables.

Backup the original file

The first step before making any changes to your data file is: BACK UP YOUR
DATA. And the easiest way to back up your data is to save it under another name.
1. If you don’t have the data view open, select it from the menu by selecting Win-
dow > Employee data.sav - SPSS Data Editor.
2. From the menu, select File > Save As, then navigate to C:\SPSSTutorialData\.
3. Name the new file EmployeeData01 (Figure 11).

26 SPSS Step-by-Step
Recodes and Transformations

FIGURE 11. Naming the new file

Enter new name

4. Click Save. Notice that the title bar of your window now identifies the file as
EmployeeData01.sav. Now you can begin your transformations.

Recoding existing variables

Recoding refers to assigning codes (or different codes) to an existing variable.

NEVER ever, ever, EVER recode your variables into the same variable name (with
one exception). That way lies madness. And chaos. For one thing it deletes your
existing data. And for another it destroys the history of the data. Always create a
new variable to contain the new codes.

Recode income data

1. From the menu, select Transform > Recode > Into Different Variables to open
the Recode window (Figure 12).

SPSS Step-by-Step 27
 Recodes and Transformations

FIGURE 12. The SPSS Recode window

2. Double-click Current Salary to move it to the Input Variable --> Output Vari-
ables pane.
3. Click Old and New Values to open window where you’ll create the new codes
(Figure 13).

FIGURE 13. Old and New Values window

4. Click the second Range radio button (lowest through) to activate its field (Fig-
ure 14).

28 SPSS Step-by-Step
Recodes and Transformations

FIGURE 14. Entering lowest income range

click here to
activate field

enter maximum value for lowest range here

5. Click in the Lowest through range and type:

24999
6. Click in the Value field under New Value and type:

1
In the new field, any incomes less than 25000 will have a value of 1. (Figure 15)

FIGURE 15. Defining the new value for the lowest income range

SPSS Step-by-Step 29
 Recodes and Transformations

7. Click Add. Notice that the complete definition of old and new values appears in
the Old --> New pane (Figure 16). In the next steps you’ll define three more
income ranges.

FIGURE 16. Recode window with Old --> New values displayed

old and new values

displayed here

8. Under Old Value, click the first Range radio button to active the minimum and
maximum values (Figure 17).

FIGURE 17. Activating minimum and maximum range values

click here to activate

range fields

9. In the first range field, type:

25000

30 SPSS Step-by-Step
Recodes and Transformations

10. In the second range field, type:

49999
11. Under New Value, type:

2
Your window should now look like Figure 18.

FIGURE 18. Recode window with minimum and maximum range values

12. Click Add. Notice that the new definition is added to the Old --> New pane.
13. Under Old Value, click the third range radio button to activate the Range ...
through Highest field (Figure 19).

FIGURE 19. Activating the range through highest field

click here to activate

Range . . . through
Highest field

SPSS Step-by-Step 31
 Recodes and Transformations

14. In the field to the left of through Highest type:

50000
15. Under New Value, type:

3
16. Click Add. Again, the new definition is added to the Old --> New pane. In the
next steps, you’ll create a value to accommodate any odd values that might have
been entered into the file. Even if you’re sure there aren’t any, check anyhow.
17. Under Old Value, click the radio button for All other values. Notice that there
is no range to enter.
18. Under New Value, type:

4
19. Click Add. Now all possible definitions are entered under the Old --> New pane
(Figure 20).

FIGURE 20. Completed definitions for income ranges

complete list of
income range
definitions

20. Click Continue. The Old and New Values window closes and the original
Recode into Different Variables window is displayed.
21. In the field for Output Variable Name type:

incrange
22. In the field for Output Variable Label type:

Income Range

32 SPSS Step-by-Step
Recodes and Transformations

The label is the name that will be displayed on all output, so you’ll want to
make sure it’s informative and correctly formatted.
23. Click Change. The new name is now listed in the Numeric Variable --> Output
Variable pane (Figure 21).

FIGURE 21. Recode window with output variable defined

original name and output name displayed here

24. Click OK. The Recode window closes and the data view is displayed. Notice
that there is now a new column on the right containing the new range codes.
(Figure 22)

FIGURE 22. Data view showing new variable

new variable

25. Noticed that the codes are displayed with two decimal places. These should be
simple integer codes, so in the next step you’ll change the format of the vari-
able.

SPSS Step-by-Step 33
 Recodes and Transformations

26. Double-click the name incrange to open the Variable View with that variable
selected (Figure 23).

FIGURE 23. Variable view with incrange selected

27. Double-click the 2 in the Decimals field and type:

0
28. Press tab or Enter to leave the field.
29. Click the Data View tab to see the corrected data. In the next step, you’ll sort the
cases in ascending and descending order of incrange to see how the values were
applied and to see if there are any values that were not included.
30. Click anywhere in the incrange column.
31. From the menu select Date > Sort Cases to open the sort window (Figure 24).

FIGURE 24. Sort Cases window

32. Scroll down to Income Range and double-click it to move it to the Sort by pane.
33. Click OK. The cases are now sorted according to the lowest income range
value.
34. From the menu select Data > Sort cases. Notice that your previous choices are
still selected.
35. Click once on Income Range in the Sort By pane.
36. Click Descending under Sort Order.

34 SPSS Step-by-Step
Recodes and Transformations

37. Click OK. The cases are now sorted with the highest income range value listed
first. If there had been any entries that did not fall into the expected categories,
they would be listed first, having a value of 4.

Now let’s put the new variable to work and display the distribution of cases by
income range.
1. From the menu, select New > Draft Output.
2. From the menu, select Analyze > Descriptive Statistics > Crosstabs.
3. In the Crosstabs window, click once on Gender, then click the right arrow to
move it into the Rows pane.
4. Click once on Income Range, then click the right arrow to move it into the Col-
umns pane.
5. Click Cells to open the Crosstabs: Cell Display window (Figure 25).

FIGURE 25. Crosstabs: Cell Display window

6. In the Percentages pane, click the check box for Row. In this case, row percent-
ages will display the percent within gender in each income range. For counts,
make sure Observe is checked.
7. Click Continue.
8. Click OK. The Crosstabs window will close and the new crosstabs will be dis-
played in the draft output window.
Notice that the income ranges are listed as 1, 2, and 3. Not very informative. So
let’s go back and assign value labels for the new variable.
9. Close the draft output window without saving.
10. In the Data View, double-click the column heading for incrange to open the
Variable View for that variable.

SPSS Step-by-Step 35
 Recodes and Transformations

11. In the Values column, click the build button to open the Value Labels dialog
box.
12. In the Value field, type:

1
13. In the Value Label field, type:

< $25,000
14. Click Add.
15. In the Value field, type:

2
16. In the Value Label field, type:

$25,000 - $49,999
17. Click Add.
18. In the Value field, type:

3
19. In the Value Label field, type:

$50,000 or more
20. Click Add.
21. In the Value field, type:

4
22. In the Value Label field, type:

Other
23. Click Add.
24. Click OK.
25. From the menu, select File > New > Draft Output.
26. From the menu, select Analyze > Descriptive Statistics > Crosstabs.
27. Your previous selections are still available, so click OK.

In this exercise. you have worked through the entire process of recoding values into
a new target variable and practiced sorting the cases to find the minimum and max-
imum values of the new variable. Finally, you used the newly defined income

36 SPSS Step-by-Step
Recoding variables revisited

ranges to create a crosstab report showing the number and percent of employees
within each income category by gender.

Re c oding va ria ble s revisit e d

Earlier, we mentioned that there is an exception regarding recoding into the same
variables.

The one exception in recoding variables

In fact, there is a case where you might want to recode a value into the same vari-
able, and that is the case of missing or unknown values.

BACK UP YOUR DATA FIRST!

In some cases, you might receive a data set which has missing or just plain odd val-
ues in one or more variables. (This will, of course, be a data set you received from
someone else, as you would never do anything so silly.) What you can then do is,
after identifying the odd values, recode them to a standard value that you will use to
represent missing data. You can use any value you want that does not already occur
as a valid value in the existing data. For example, suppose you have a field that was
supposed to be numeric but someone entered hyphens to indicate that they saw the
field but didn’t have any data to enter. (Don’t laugh. We’re working on a project
with just that problem.) You might then review all the data, find a value that does
not already exist as a valid value and change the hyphens to that value. For exam-
ple, if you work with legacy data sets, you’ll probably find a value of 9 or 99 used
to represent missing data.

The other exception

There are cases (we hope they’re rare) where you’ll want to recode unacceptable
values to a flag value that you can use in subsetting your data. For example, sup-
pose you’re surveying income and you find that values range from 0 to 55000,
except for ten values that are all greater than ten million. As it happens, you can’t
go back to confirm the odd values, but you don’t want to use them in your calcula-
tions. In that case, you might want to recode anything over, say, 60000 to a flag
value like 99999. In your calculations, you then have a standard value you can use
to exclude any outliers or suspicious data from your analyses. As usual, however,
be sure to back up your original file before recoding any variables.

SPSS Step-by-Step 37
 Recoding variables revisited

On the whole, however, we prefer to recode into different variables.

BE SURE TO RECORD ALL CHANGES TO THE DATA SET.

38 SPSS Step-by-Step
3 Charting your data

Okay, you’ve done all the hard work, created the data collection instrument, con-
ducted the interviews or surveys, entered the data, cleaned the data and made any
necessary recodes or transformations, and now it’s time to find out what it all
means. One of the best ways to get an idea of what your data looks like (literally) is
to generate charts. Charts provide visual displays of comparisons and relationships.
They can also be extremely misleading in the hands of a bad analyst, so be careful.
If you’re going to be working with charts, two excellent sources of information and
guidelines are Edward Tufte’s work on visual representations and Gerald Jones’s
book How to Lie with Charts.1

A word on charts: keep them simple. The purpose of charts is to illuminate relation-
ships and comparisons, not to obscure them. Eschew what Tufte calls chart junk
and go for simple, clean, and clear designs. But that’s a whole other course.

SPSS excels at charts. Many of its functions exceed even those of Microsoft Excel
and Microsoft Access, which are pretty good on their own. SPSS provides three
methods of creating charts: you can use the automated chart function, you can use
the interactive chart function, or you can start with the blank chart and build it from

1. Jones, Gerald E., How to Lie with Charts, Sybex 1995. Tufte, Edward R., The Visual Dis-
play of Quantitative Information, Graphics Press, 1983, Envisioning Information, Graph-
ics Press, 1990, Visual Explanations, Graphics Press, 1997.

SPSS Step-by-Step 39
 Using the automated chart function

scratch. For the charts you’ll be creating here, you’ll use all three methods to create
charts that illustrate gender distribution within job categories.

U sing t he a ut om at e d cha r t func t ion

1. If it not already open, open the data file named Employee Data.sav in the folder
named SPSSTutorialData.
2. From the menu, select File > New > Draft Output.
3. From the menu, select Graphs > Bar. (Figure 26)

FIGURE 26. Creating a simple bar chart

4. Make sure Simple is selected.

5. Click Define. SPSS then displays the Define Simple Bar window (Figure 27)
where you will begin to select the variables to be displayed.

40 SPSS Step-by-Step
Using the automated chart function

FIGURE 27. Define simple bar window

6. Click once on Employment Category, then click the right arrow to move it to the
Category Axis field.
7. Click OK. SPSS displays the completed chart. Not too interesting, right? Let’s
make it a little more interesting.
8. From the menu, select Graphs > Bar.
9. This time, select (click) Clustered, then click Define.
10. Click once on Employment Category, then click the right arrow to move it to the
category axis.
11. Click once on Gender, then click the right arrow to move it to Define Clusters
By.
12. Click OK. Much more interesting. In the next step, you’ll improve your chart
with explanatory titles.
13. From the menu, select Graphs > Bar.
14. This time, select (click) Clustered, then click Define.
15. Click once on Employment Category, then click the right arrow to move it to the
category axis.
16. Click once on Gender, then click the right arrow to move it to Define Clusters
By.
17. Click Titles.

SPSS Step-by-Step 41
 Using the automated chart function

18. On the first line, type:

Job Category Distribution by Gender

19. On the first line under Footnote, type:

Print date: 3/16/2004

20. On the second line under Footnote, type:

Data source: SPSS sample data file, Employee dat.sav

21. Click Continue.
22. Click OK.

Using the Interactive Chart function

While the automated chart function is handy, it limits the degree to which you can
customize your chart. The interactive function provides more flexibility and power.
In the interactive chart window, you’ll drag variables to the axis where you want
them displayed.
1. From the menu, select Graphs > Interactive > Bar.
2. Click once on Employment Category and move it to the horizontal axis, as in
Figure 28.

42 SPSS Step-by-Step
Using the automated chart function

FIGURE 28. Moving a variable to the horizontal axis

dragging a variable to the

horizontal axis

3. Click OK. Now you have a simple bar chart, more or less like the first one you
created. So let’s add some information.
4. From the menu, select Graphs > Interactive > Bar. Notice that when the window
opens, it still contains the information from your last chart.
5. This time, drag Gender to the field under Legend Variables called Color (Figure
29).

SPSS Step-by-Step 43
 Using the automated chart function

FIGURE 29. Dragging a variable to the legend color field

drag a variable to the

legend color field to add
a grouping variable to the
chart

6. Click OK. Now you have a chart with employment category broken out by gen-
der. Now you could add several more grouping variables to the chart, but it
would begin to look pretty cluttered. To solve this problem, Tufte came up with
the idea of small multiples, the practice of displaying smaller charts with each
chart displaying only one of the grouping variables. In SPSS, such charts are
called panel charts.
7. From the menu, select Graphs > Interactive > Bar.
8. Notice that your previous choices are still displayed. This time, however, drag
Gender from the Legend Variables field down to the field for Panel Variables as
in Figure 30.

44 SPSS Step-by-Step
Using the automated chart function

FIGURE 30. Dragging a variable to the Panel Variables field

drag one or more variables

to the Panel Variables
pane to create a separate
chart for each grouping
variable

9. Click OK. The Draft Output window now displays two charts, one with
employment category distributions for women, the other with the same informa-
tion for men.

Creating a chart from scratch

In the Output window (not the Draft Output window) you can create a chart from
scratch, with complete control over every aspect of the graph.
1. From the menu, select File > New > Output.
2. From the menu in the Output window, select Insert > Interactive 2-D Graph.
SPSS displays the new, empty graph. (Figure 31)

SPSS Step-by-Step 45
 Using the automated chart function

FIGURE 31. Blank interactive graph

3. Move your cursor slowly over the various icons displayed on the graph. Notice
that SPSS displays a description of each icon.
4. Click the Assign Graph Variables icon (Figure 32).

46 SPSS Step-by-Step
Using the automated chart function

FIGURE 32. Selecting the Assign Graph Variables tool

click here to assign

variables to the graph

5. SPSS opens the Assign Graph Variables window in Figure 33.

FIGURE 33. Assign Graph Variables window

SPSS Step-by-Step 47
 Using the automated chart function

6. From the left panel, drag Count [$count] to the field for the y axis (Figure 34).

FIGURE 34. Dragging a variable to the y axis

7. Now drag Employment Category to the x axis (Figure 35).

FIGURE 35. Dragging a variable to the x axis.

8. Finally, drag Gender to the field for Legend Variables Color (Figure 36).

48 SPSS Step-by-Step
Using the automated chart function

FIGURE 36. Dragging a variable to the Legend Variables Color field

9. Click the X close button. Notice that the chart has the axis variables assigned
but still has no data.
10. From the menu, select Insert > Summary > Bar. Your initial chart is now com-
plete.

In fact, SPSS graphing functions go far beyond what we have explored here. You
can customize your chart by creating different types of charts (cloud, scatterplots,
line graphs, etc.) and by adding elements such as value labels, titles, notes, and
much more. Now that you have a general feeling for how graphs work in SPSS,
take some time to explore other functions. If you have any questions, be sure to
refer to the Help menu.

SPSS Step-by-Step 49
SPSS Step-by-Step 50
SPSS Step-by-Step

Tutorial: Part 2

For SPSS Version 11.5

© DataStep Development 2004
1 Transformations and recoding
revisited 5
Introduction 5
Value labels 5
SPSS Tutorial and Help 6
Using online help 6
Using the Syntax Guide 7
Using the statistics coach 8
Moving around the output window 10
Sorting Revisited: Sorting by multiple
variables 11
Utilities: variable and file information 12
Utilities > Variables 12
Utilities > File Info 13
Data Transformations 14
Computing new variables 14
Performing calculations with a variable and a function 14
Creating expressions with more than one variable 16
Conditional expressions 18
Creating subsets 20
Deeper into crosstabs 23
Crosstab Statistics 23
Crosstab cells 24
Adding layers to crosstabs 26
When to include zeros in a mean 27
Gender, geography, and exercise: the universal
variables 28
Summary 28

2 Statistical procedures 31
Introduction 31
Measuring association 31
Bivariate correlations 32
Partial correlation 35
 Multiple correlation (multiple regression) 36
Crosstabs 37
Measuring differences 39
T-Tests 39
ANOVA 42
One-Way ANOVA 43
Summary 47
1 Transformations and
recoding revisited

I nt roduc t ion

In the first session, we’ll explored the SPSS interface, some elimentary data man-
agement and recodes, and some basic charting. In this second session, we’ll explore
work with more complex data transformations like combining variables and subset-
ting populations and work with some of the primary statistical functions. We’ll also
look more closely at the online help and tutorial provided by SPSS. . But first, a
small clean-up task from last week: displaying and hiding value labels.

Va lue la be ls
1. Open SPSS.
2. Open the data file by selecting File > Open > Data and finding the file
Employee data.sav in the folder named SPSSTutorialData.
3. Make sure you’re in the Data View of any data file.
4. From the menu, select View > Value Labels. If Value Labels is checked, the
value labels will be displayed for variables for which you have defined value
labels. If it is not checked, the actual values will be displayed.

SPSS Step-by-Step 5
 SPSS Tutorial and Help

5. Select View from the menu again and make sure that Value Labels is checked.
If it isn’t, click it once to select it. You can turn value labels on or off at any time
during an SPSS session.

SPSS Tut oria l a nd H e lp

SPSS provides extensive assistance through its online help, tutorial, syntax guide,
and statistics coach.

Using online help

1. From the menu, select Help > Topics.
2. In the keyword field, type:

crosstabs
Notice that SPSS begins matching topics as soon as you begin typing.
3. From the list below the keyword field, double-click assumptions.
4. From the keyword list, double-click formats.
Notice that the resulting help window informs you that you can “arrange rows in
ascending or descending order of the values of the row variable.” What’s wrong
with this statement? Hint: In the rest of the computer world, “format” applies to
how you display text or numbers. Arranging in ascending or descending order is
called sorting. Lesson: If a standard already exists, use it; don’t confuse people
by making it up as you go along.
5. From the Related topics list, click once on -Related procedures. The help win-
dow now displays information about modeling relationships between two or
more categorical variables.
6. From the Related topics list, click once on Model Selection Loglinear Analy-
sis Data Considerations. The help window now displays more information
about this technique.
7. In the keyword field, type:

chi-square
8. From the keyword list, double-click Chi-square test.
9. In the next window, click Display. Notice that the help window now displays
general information about the Chi-square test. In addition to the list of related
topics, the window also contains a Show Me link.

6 SPSS Step-by-Step
SPSS Tutorial and Help

10. Click Show Me. SPSS now opens the tutorial to the chi-square topic in the form
of an Internet page.
11. Click Next. In addition to an example of how to use a chi-square test, the win-
dow also identifies the sample data file you can use to follow the example for
yourself.
12. Click Next.
13. Read the text on the right side of the screen. Here is where the tutorial explains
each step. And yes, that is a typo in “you must first be weight the cases …”
Ignore the “be.”
14. Click Next and read the steps.
15. Click Next and read the steps.
16. Click Next.
17. Click Next. SPSS now displays the sample output.
18. Close the tutorial window.
19. Close the Help window.

As with most help systems, you can use links to investigate topics related to the
keyword you selected. In SPSS, however, you can also open the online tutorial to
get more information about using a specific procedure.

Using the Syntax Guide

If you need information about SPSS syntax, you can open the online Syntax Guide.
This guide explains each command and provides examples of its use. The Syntax
Guide is in Adobe Acrobat format. In this format, you can search the guide for spe-
cific text or use the Bookmarks pane to find a specific command.
1. From the menu, select Help > Syntax Guide > Base.
2. Look at the bottom of the window where Acrobat lists the page count. Yes, that
is 1490 pages. In other words, if you want, you can print the entire Syntax
Guide.
3. In the bookmarks pane, click the “+” to the left of UNIVERSALS. The topic
opens to display its subtopics.
4. Click the “+” to the left of Commands. (The Commands under Universals, that
is, not the Commands further down the list.)
5. Click Syntax Diagrams. This topic provides information about the basic struc-
ture of SPSS syntax.

SPSS Step-by-Step 7
 SPSS Tutorial and Help

6. Now click the “+” to the left of the top-level COMMANDS topic. The window
opens to display the subtopics for COMMANDS.
7. Scroll down until you can see the CROSSTABS entry.
8. Click the “+” to the left of CROSSTABS.
9. Click the word CROSSTABS. The Crosstabs page is now displayed and pro-
vides information about the complete format of the Crosstabs command.
10. Close the Syntax Guide window.

Using the statistics coach

One of the most useful functions in SPSS is the statistics coach, particularly when
you’re just starting to work with the program. The statistics coach provides prompts
at which you can select what you want to do, the kind of data you’re using, and the
kind of output you want.
1. From the menu, select Help > Statistics Coach. SPSS opens the first Statistics
Coach window (Figure 1).

FIGURE 1. Statistics Coach, opening window

8 SPSS Step-by-Step
SPSS Tutorial and Help

2. Take a moment to review the choices offered in this window.

3. Click More Examples a few times and notice that different types output avail-
able to you.
4. For the moment, we’ll use the default task, Summarize, describe, or present
data, so click Next.
5. In this case, we want to create a summary of gender by job category. Both vari-
ables are categorical, so click Next.
6. This time we’ll change the output from the default, so select Charts and
graphs by clicking its radio button.
7. We want a simple two-dimensional chart, so click Next.
8. Click Next.
9. We want a bar chart, so click Finish.
10. SPSS now opens the correct window for creating a bar chart with the type of
data we have selected.
11. Drag Employment Category to the horizontal axis.
12. Drag Gender to the Legend Variables > Color field.
13. Close the remaining help window.
14. Click OK. The chart appears in the output window. Next, we’ll use the statistics
coach for a more complicated task.
15. From the menu, select Window > Employee Data.sav - SPSS Editor to get back
to the Data window.
16. From the menu select Help > Statistics Coach.
17. Select Compare groups for significant differences.
18. Click Next.
19. We’re using categorical data, so click Finish. The How To window appears to
guide you through the steps along with the Crosstabs window. (You might have
to move them around a bit so you can see both windows.
20. Select Gender and move it to the Rows pane.
21. Select Employment Category and move it to the Columns pane.
22. Click Statistics.
23. In the Crosstabs: Statistics window, select Chi-square.
24. Click Continue.
25. In the How To window, click Tell Me More. SPSS now displays the Data
Requirements window that applies to using Chi-square.
26. Click Next. Surprise! There is no next topic. Ha, ha, SPSS. Very funny.

SPSS Step-by-Step 9
 Moving around the output window

27. Click OK.

28. Click Back. Oh look! There is no Back.
29. Close the Data Requirements window.
30. In the Crosstabs window, click OK. The output is now displayed in the Output
window.
31. Close any remaining Help windows.

M oving a round t he out put w indow

Now that you have created some charts, crosstabs, and statistics results, it’s a good
time to take a closer look at moving around the output window.
1. From the menu, select Window > Output1 - SPSS Viewer.
2. Move your cursor over the border between the panels, hold down the mouse
button, and move the border to the right until you can read all the titles in the
icons in the contents pane as in Figure 2.

FIGURE 2. Changing pane width in the output window

hold and drag here

to change the pane
size in the output
window

3. Notice the icons on the left arranged in outline format.

4. Click the icon named Interactive Graph. The output displays moves to the first
graph you created in this session.

10 SPSS Step-by-Step
Sorting Revisited: Sorting by multiple variables

5. Notice the “-” to the left of the Output icon. The “-” indicates that a topic is fully
expanded.
6. Click the “-” next to Output. The “-” changes to a “+” and all the output is now
hidden. If you ever “lose” output on the window, check to see if the output is
hidden.
7. Click “+” next to Output to expand the items again.
8. Click the icon named “Crosstabs.”
9. Holding down the left mouse button, drag “Crosstabs” up above “Interactive
Chart.” You can use the drag function to arrange your output in any order you
like.
10. Below Crosstabs, click the icon for Title.
11. Click the icon for Chi-square tests. Notice that the red arrow next to the icon
corresponds to the red arrow in the actual output window.
12. Under Interactive Graph, click Bar Chart.
13. Above the actual chart, double-click the title (“Interactive Graph”).
14. Select all the text and type:

Distribution of job category by gender

15. Click anywhere outside the title to apply the change.
16. In the navigation pane, click Title under Interactive Graph.
17. Wait about one second, then click Title again to activate the text.
18. With the text selected, type:

Distribution of job category by gender

19. Press Enter or click anywhere outside the title to apply the change.
Use the title function in the navigation pane to indicate what each piece of out-
put it contains. “Distribution of job category by gender” is a lot more informa-
tive than “Title.”

Sor t ing Revisit e d: Sor t ing by m ult iple va ria ble s

SPSS provides sophisticated sorting functions. You can sort by multiple variables,
and you can set the sort order for each variable. For example, you could sort in
order of increasing income, decreasing birthdate, and increasing expenditures. In
the following task, you’ll sort the employee data set by gender (increasing) and cur-
rent salary (decreasing).

SPSS Step-by-Step 11
 Utilities: variable and file information

1. Switch back to the data view by selecting Window > Employee data.sav - SPSS
Data Editor.
2. From the menu, select Data > Sort Cases.
3. Clear any criteria that might already be in the Sort by pane by double-clicking
them.
4. Double-click gender and current salary to move them to the Sort by pane.
5. Click once on gender.
6. If it is not already selected, select Ascending.
7. Click once on current salary.
8. Click Descending.
9. Click OK. Notice that all female employees are now listed first, in descending
salary order.

U t ilit ie s: va ria ble a nd file infor m at ion

Tucked quietly under the Utilities menu are two especially useful functions: Vari-
ables and File Info. You can use these functions to get a snapshot of each variable
in the file (Variables) and all variables together (File Info).

Utilities > Variables

The Variables function provides all the information about each variable in your
data file, including any categorical codes and their value labels.
1. From the menu, select Utilities > Variables. (Figure 3)

12 SPSS Step-by-Step
Utilities: variable and file information

FIGURE 3. Variables window

2. In the variable list, click jobcat. Notice that the Variable Information pane dis-
plays the variable name, label, defined missing value, measurement level, val-
ues, and value labels.
3. Click salary. This value is a scale variable (continuous) and so has no value
labels.
4. The Go To button takes you to the specific variable within a selected case or to
the variable in the first case if no case is selected.
5. Click Close.

Utilities > File Info

The File Info window provides information about all variables in the file. This is
extremely useful information. We recommend that you print out the file definition
regularly and keep it close at hand.
1. From the menu, select Utilities > File Info.
2. Scroll through the output to see how each variable is described. Because this
information goes to the output window, be sure that you print only the File Info
output.
3. In the navigation pane, click once on the File Information icon.
4. Press Ctrl-P to open a print dialog window. Notice that under Print Range you
can select All Visible Output or Selection. When you print the File Info, be sure
to select Selection.
5. Click Cancel.

SPSS Step-by-Step 13
 Data Transformations

Dat a Tra nsfor m at ions

SPSS provides a number of funtions you can use in computing new variables,
including:
• Tarithmetic funtions
• statistical functions
• string functions
• date and time functions
• distribution functions
• random variable functions
• missing value functions

In this session, we’ll be looking at only the arithmetic functions.

Computing new variables

Performing calculations with a variable and a function

In some cases, you might want to calculate new variables based on values in exist-
ing variables and some arithmetic function like multiplying or dividing. For exam-
ple, if you have a variable that contains an annual salary, you might want to
calcuate a monthly salary. To create the new variable, you use the Compute func-
tion.
1. In the Data window, select from the menu Transform > Compute. (Figure 4)

14 SPSS Step-by-Step
Data Transformations

FIGURE 4. Compute window

2. In the Target Variable field, type:

salmonth
3. Click Type & Label. (Figure 5)

FIGURE 5. Compute: Type and label window

4. In the Label field, type:

Average monthly salary

5. Click Continue.
6. In the Compute Variable window, select Current Salary and move it to the
Numeric Expression pane by clicking the right arrow.
7. In the Numeric Expression pane, click the cursor after salary and type:

/12

SPSS Step-by-Step 15
 Data Transformations

Your window should now look likeFigure 6

FIGURE 6. Entering a compute formula

8. Click OK. The Compute Variable window closes and the new variable is dis-
played in the Data window. You can now use the new variable in procedures
such as crosstabs or in further calculations. For example, you could create a new
variable for monthly withholding that calculates withholding as a percentage of
monthly salary. You could then subtrack the new withholding variable from the
monthly salary to create still another variable for monthly net.

Creating expressions with more than one variable

Let’s use the previous example of calculating withholding and net to compute vari-
ables based on more than one variable. First you’ll compute the withholding vari-
able, then you’ll compute the net variable.
1. From the menu, select Transform > Compute.
2. In the Target Variable field, type:

withhold
3. Click Type & Label.
4. In the Label field, type:

Monthly withholding
5. Click Continue.
6. Select all the text in the Numeric Expression field and delete it.

16 SPSS Step-by-Step
Data Transformations

7. Move the new variable, Average Monthly Salary, to the Numeric Expression
field.
8. Click after salmonth and type:

* .05

Note: If you haven’t worked with computer programs before to make calculations,
the asterisk denotes multiplication. A double asterisk (**) denotes exponen-
tiation. In SPSS, a vertical bar (|) denotes “OR”, and the ampersand (&)
denotes “AND”.

9. Click OK. The new variable appears in the data view. In the next step, you’ll
use two variables to calculate a third.
10. From the menu, select Transform > Compute.
11. In the Target Variable field, type:

netmonth
12. Click Type & Label.
13. In the Label field, type:

Monthly net
14. Click Continue.
15. Select all the text in the Numeric Expression field and delete it.
16. From the list of variables, select Average Monthly Salary and move it to the
Numeric Expression field.
17. Click after salmonth in the Numeric Expression field.
18. Using the keypad in the Compute Variable window, click “-”.
19. From the list of variables, select the new variable Monthly Withholding.
20. Click the right arrow to move it to the Numeric Expression pane. Your Compute
Variable window should now look like Figure 7.

SPSS Step-by-Step 17
 Data Transformations

FIGURE 7. Complete Compute Variable window for monthly net

21. Click OK. The new variable appears in the data view.

Conditional expressions
In some cases, you might want to look at only a specific subset of your data. Say
you want to send a monthly newsletter to only female clerical staff. To identify
these staff, you’ll calculate a new binary variable (one that has only two values)
using the IF statement to set the condition.
1. From the menu, select Transform > Compute.
2. In the Target Variable field type:

femclerk
3. Click Type & Label.
4. In the Label field type:

Female Clerical
5. Click Continue.
6. Select all the text in the Numeric Expression field and delete it.
7. In the Numeric Expression field type:

1
8. Click If to open the Compute Variable: If Cases window (Figure 8).

18 SPSS Step-by-Step
Data Transformations

FIGURE 8. Compute Variable: If Cases window

9. Select Include if case satistifes condition.

10. Double-click Gender to move it to conditions field.
11. Click after Gender in the conditions field and type:

= “f”

Note: Whenever you create a condition, you must use the actual values in the vari-
able, not their labels. Thus, setting a condition to gender = “Female” would
not select any cases.

12. Click after “f” and type a space.

13. Using the keypad in the Compute Variable window, click &. You use the
ampersand to add a second condition.
14. From the field list, double-click Employment category to move it to the calcu-
lation pane.
15. In the calculation pane, type:

=1
Note that you don’t use quotation marks this time because is a numeric variable.
16. Click Continue.

SPSS Step-by-Step 19
 Data Transformations

17. Click OK. The new variable appears in the Data window. Scroll through the
records to see how the values in the new variable. Notice that cases where gen-
der is not female and job category is not manager have only a period, indicating
a missing value. Only those cases where gender is female and jobcat is manager
contain a 1 in the new variable.

Creating subsets
In some instances, you might want to use only part of the file in an analysis. For
example, you might want to look at changes in income among single working
mothers. Or you might want to consider only staff born before a specific date.

To select a subset of the cases in your file,

1. From the menu, select Data > Select Cases (Figure 9).

FIGURE 9. Select cases window

2. Select If condition is satisfied by clicking its radio button.

3. Click If.... Notice that the Select Cases: If window looks exactly like the If win-
dow you used in the earlier compute procedures.
4. From the variable list, double-click Date of Birth.
5. Click the cursor anywhere after bdate in the calculation pane.

20 SPSS Step-by-Step
Data Transformations

6. Type (or select from the keypad):

<
7. Scroll through the Function menu and double-click
DATE.MDY(month,day,year). (Figure 10)

FIGURE 10. Selecting a function

scroll here to
select a
function

In the next step, you’ll set the date criterion. SPSS adds the function to the cal-
culation pane, substituting question marks to indicate that you need to specify
the values.
8. Select the first question mark and type:

1
9. Select the second question mark and type:

1
10. Select the third question mark and type:

1940
Your completed window should look like Figure 11.

SPSS Step-by-Step 21
 Data Transformations

FIGURE 11. Completed Select Cases: If window

11. Click Continue.

12. Click OK. Notice that many of the records are marked with a diagonal line
through the record number. These cases are excluded from any further calcula-
tions until you specifically include them again.
13. To see the effect of the subset selection, right click the heading for bdate.
14. From the pop-up menu, select Sort Ascending. Notice that all employees born
before 1940 are selected, except for the person with the missing date of birth. In
the next step, you’ll instruct SPSS to include all cases until otherwise instructed.
15. From the menu select Data > Select Cases.
16. Select All Cases by clicking its radio button (Figure 12).

22 SPSS Step-by-Step
Deeper into crosstabs

FIGURE 12. Selecting all cases

click here to
include all
cases

17. Click OK. The diagonal lines appear to be gone, but to be sure, right-click the
heading of bdate again and select Sort Descending, so that the youngest
employees are listed first. Notice that they are no longer excluded.

De e pe r int o c rosst a bs

Crosstab Statistics
When you the various statistical techniques, SPSS will frequently tell you what
kind of statistical tests are available for that procedure. For example, if you ask for
crosstabs, SPSS offers a number of statistics based on the type of data you’re using.
(Figure 13)

SPSS Step-by-Step 23
 Deeper into crosstabs

FIGURE 13. Statistics indicated by data type in Crosstabs: Statistics window

data type

available tests

For example, when you select a statistic like Chi-square, SPSS indiates the particu-
lar Chi-square technique that should be used based on the type of data. If you are
using nominal or ordinal data, SPSS provides a number of methods you can include
in your output. To see how SPSS makes the selection of techniques and to see the
description of the data types and corresponding statistics, try the following.
1. From the menu, select Help > Topics.
2. Click the Index tab and enter:

crosstabs
3. From the list below your entry, select Statistics. SPSS Help displays a descrip-
tion of the types of statistics to select based on the type of data you’re using.
4. Close the Help window.

Crosstab cells
Using the Crosstab cell display window (Figure 14) you can determine what data
will be displayed in each cell of the crosstab.

24 SPSS Step-by-Step
Deeper into crosstabs

FIGURE 14. Crosstab cell display

Try it:
1. From the menu, select Analyze > Descriptive Statistics > Crosstabs.
2. Move Gender to the Rows list.
3. Move Employment Category to the columns list.
4. Click Cells.
5. Under Percentages, select Row, Column, and Total.
6. Click Continue.
7. Click OK. SPSS displays the completed crosstab in the output window.
Gender * Employment Category Crosstabulation

Employment Category
Clerical Custodial Manager Total
Gender Female Count 206 0 10 216
Row % 95.4% .0% 4.6% 100.0%
Column % 56.7% .0% 11.9% 45.6%
Total % 43.5% .0% 2.1% 45.6%
Male Count 157 27 74 258
Row % 60.9% 10.5% 28.7% 100.0%
Column % 43.3% 100.0% 88.1% 54.4%
Total % 33.1% 5.7% 15.6% 54.4%
Total Count 363 27 84 474
Row % 76.6% 5.7% 17.7% 100.0%
Column % 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%
Total % 76.6% 5.7% 17.7% 100.0%

SPSS Step-by-Step 25
 Deeper into crosstabs

Notice that each cell contains the count, the percent of the row, the percent of
the column, and the percent of the total. Crosstabs like this are useful for both a
general overview and closer study of your data. For publication, however, you
may want to simplify the output by including only a column or row percentage,
depending on the issue you’re addressing.
Suppose you only want to know the distribution of job categories within gender.
In the next task, you’ll create a cross-tab that includes only row percentages.
8. From the menu, select Analyze > Descriptive Statistics > Crosstabs.
9. Move Gender to the Rows pane.
10. Move Employment to the Columns pane.
11. Click Cells.
12. Under percentages, make sure only Row is selected. Clear any others that are
already selected.
13. Click Continue.
14. Click OK. Your new output will look like Figure 15. If you wanted to know per-
centages of each job category across gender, you would select only column per-
centages.

FIGURE 15. Crosstab showing only row percentages

Gender * Employment Category Crosstabulation

Employment Category
Clerical Custodial Manager Total
Gender Female Count 206 0 10 216
Row % 95.4% .0% 4.6% 100.0%
Male Count 157 27 74 258
Row % 60.9% 10.5% 28.7% 100.0%
Total Count 363 27 84 474
Row % 76.6% 5.7% 17.7% 100.0%

Adding layers to crosstabs

So far, we have worked with just a single variable for rows. You can make your
crosstabs much more specific, however, by adding multiple row variables or by
adding layers. In this exercise, you’ll create layered crosstabs that provide a more
detailed breakdown of the data.
1. From the menu, select Analyze > Descriptive Statistics > Crosstabs. Notice that
the variables from the previous crosstab are still selected.

26 SPSS Step-by-Step
When to include zeros in a mean

2. From the variable list, move Minority Classification to the Layer pane.
3. Click OK. Notice that you’re still getting row percentages only because we did
not reset the cells information. Notice also that the Layers variable becomes the
uppermost level, followed by gender. In the next task, you’ll reverse that order.
4. From the menu, select Analyze > Descriptive Statistics > Crosstabs. Notice that
the variables from the previous crosstab are still selected.
5. In the Rows pane, double-click Gender to move it back to the variable list.
6. In the Layers pane, double-click Minority Classification to move it back to the
variable list.
7. Move Minority Classification to the Rows pane.
8. Move Gender to the Layers pane.
9. Click Cells.
10. Under percentages, select Row, Column, and Total.
11. Click Continue.
12. Click OK. In the new output, the crosstab displays Minority Classification
within Gender.

You can continue to add layers and multiple rows to your crosstabs. Remember
Robin’s rule, however: ALWAYS GET THE UNIVERSE FIRST. That is, print out
the most general crosstabs before getting into the detail.

Whe n t o include ze ros in a m e a n

We were once working on a project looking into some of the economic issues of
child care, and one of the researchers asked if we should include in the calculation
of the average price the number of people who didn’t use child care. The answer is:
it depends. If you want to look at, say, an average price paid, then, no, you would
not include people who didn’t buy the product. If, on the other hand, you want to
know the per capita cost, then, yes, you would include everyone.

The question involves the issue of whether to include zero values in calculating sta-
tistics such as means or standard deviations or conducting statistical tests such as t-
tests and ANOVAs. And to some degree the answer lies in the question itself. If
you say, “How much did people pay for child care?” (or gasoline or televisions or
clothes) then you want to look at the actual purchase price among those who actu-
ally purchased the product. If, for example, I tell you that the average per capita
cost of gasoline is thirty cents a gallon, that’s not going to tell you what to expect

SPSS Step-by-Step 27
 Gender, geography, and exercise: the universal variables

the next time you drive up to the pump. What you really want to know is, what’s
the average price today in this particular area. If, on the other hand, you’re working
for the Council of Economic Advisors and you want to know how the cost of gaso-
line factors into the overall expenditures of an average family, you do want to use a
per capita cost.

The other question to consider is whether zero is a valid value in your data set. In
medical research, for example, particularly in dose-response research or lab values,
zero is obviously a valid value. In other cases, such as a five-point Likert scale
beginning with 1, zero is not a valid value and should be treated as missing on an
error. In other words, the decision about whether to include zero in a particular test
depends on whether it’s a valid value and on the particular question you’re asking.

Ge nde r, ge ogra phy, a nd exe rc ise : t he unive rsa l

va ria ble s

There are certain variables that will affect nearly any statistic or test you use. Our
particular favorites are gender, geography, and exercise. These are variables whose
effect is so pervasive that failing to take them into account can seriously affect the
validity of your research. There are others, of course, that will affect whatever data
you work with to varying degrees. Age, of course, is certainly one, along with diet
and ethnicity. If you’re conducting medical research, for example, you must always
take into account age, gender, and ethnicity. More and more, however, the level of
exercise is being included as a concomitant variable‘. We once had a research psy-
chologist tell us that “Exercise is implicated in every variable we look at.” In social
science research, age, gender, ethnicity, and education are critical factors. The
moral: when you are designing a research project, make sure you have accounted
for all the variables that might affect the outcomes, not just the ones of immediate
interest.

Sum m a r y
If you think we have spent an awful lot of time dealing with data management and
crosstabs, you’re right. You’ll spend about eighty percent (a very rough guess) of
your time on these two tasks. Then, finally, when you have the data exactly the way
you need it, you run a couple of quick statistics and then . . . you start all over again.
Remember that data analysis is iterative, so get ready now to do the same types of
tasks over and over and over.

28 SPSS Step-by-Step
Summary

And over.

SPSS Step-by-Step 29
 Summary

30 SPSS Step-by-Step
2 Statistical procedures

I nt roduc t ion
This tutorial is not a replacement for a course in basic statistics or for a textbook on
that subject. The primary emphasis here is on the use of SPSS to explore data and to
answer some of the statistical questions you might ask about your data.

In this chapter we will review some of the SPSS procedures for evaluating the asso-
ciation among two or more variables, and procedures for measuring differences
among groups.

M e a suring a ssoc iat ion

Typically the association between two variables is evaluated by using a bivariate
correlation procedure. If the two variables are continuous and you want to predict
one variable using the value of the other, a simple linear regression or some method
of curve estimation can be used.

If there are more than two variables and they are continuous, use a partial or a mul-
tiple correlation procedure. If you want to predict one of the variables using the val-
ues of the other variables, a multiple regression can be used.

SPSS Step-by-Step 31
 Measuring association

If you have frequency distributions based upon one or more categorical variables,
you should consider crosstabulation or Chi-square. A categorical variable could be
one that naturally exists, such as eye color, or could be derived by “categorizing” a
continuous variable.

Bivariate correlations
Bivariate correlations measure the degree of association between two variables. If
the two variables are continuous, the Pearson product moment correlation is an
appropriate measure. If they are not continuous (that is, if they are discrete or cate-
gorical), it would be more appropriate to use Spearman’s rho or Kendall’s tau-b.

The correlation coefficient, which ranges from -1 to +1 is both a measure of the

strength of the relationship and the direction of the relationship. A correlation coef-
ficient of 1 describes a perfect relationship in which every change of +1 in one vari-
able is associated with a change of +1 in the other variable. A correlation of -1
describes a perfect relationship in which every change of +1 in one variable is asso-
ciated with a change of -1 in the other variable. A correlation of 0 describes a situa-
tion in which a change in one variable is not associated with any particular change
in the other variable. In other words, knowing the value of one of the variables
gives you no information about the value of the other.

The correlation squared is another measure of the strength of the relationship. In

fact, the correlation squared is the percent of the variance in the dependent vari-
able that is accounted for or predicted by the independent variable.

You can also determine the statistical significance of the correlation coefficient. If
the direction of the association is hypothesized in advance, you can use a one-tailed
test to determine whether the correlation is statistically significantly different from
zero, otherwise use a two-tailed test.

Correlation is not causation. If we looked at the correlation of the time the paper
boy delivers the morning paper and the time of the sunrise, we would find a very
strong positive correlation. And yet, we would be reluctant to claim that the news-
paper boy causes the sun to rise.

How to: In this exercise, you’ll calculate a Pearson correlation between current
salary and months since employment,
1. In the data window, open the file named Employee data.sav in the folder named
SPSSTutorialData.

32 SPSS Step-by-Step
Measuring association

2. In the data window, from the menu select Analyze > Correlate > Bivariate (Fig-
ure 16).

FIGURE 16. Bivariate correlations window

3. Double-click Current Salary to move it to the Variables list.

4. Double-click Beginning Salary to move it to the Variables list.
5. Click Options. (Figure 17)

FIGURE 17. Bivariate correlations: options window

6. In the Statistics pane, select Means and standard deviations by clicking its
check box.
7. Click Continue.
8. Click OK. The output is displayed in the Output window. (Figure 18)

SPSS Step-by-Step 33
 Measuring association

FIGURE 18. Pearson correlation for current salary x beginning salary

Correlations

Beginning
Current Salary Salary
Current Salary Pearson Correlation
Sig. (2-tailed)
N
Beginning Salary Pearson Correlation .880**
Sig. (2-tailed) .000
N 474
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

9. Notice that the correlation is particularly high (.880). The footnote to the table
indiates that correlation is significant at the .01 level. (And, no, we can’t find
any documentation on why SPSS has highlighted the particularly high correla-
tion. Just another one of those moments of cryptic helpfulness.)
10. On the contents pane of the output window, click the Correlations icon indicated
by the red arrow (you may have to scroll down a bit to see it), then click it again
to allow you to change the name.
11. Type:

Pearson: Curr Sal X Beg Sal

12. Press Enter or click anywhere away from the title to apply the change. Try to
get in the practice of naming each portion of output so that you can quickly find
what you’re looking for.

Homework: The SPSS tutorial has an excellent section on using correlations. To

find it, open the Help menu and enter correlations, bivariate as the
search term. In the Help window, click Show Me.

34 SPSS Step-by-Step
Measuring association

Partial correlation
Partial correlation is used to measure the association of two continuous variables
after controlling for the association of other variables. Conceptually, what is being
done is to first calculate the variance in the dependent variable that can be
explained or accounted for by all of the control variables. The variance accounted
for by the control variables is then removed from the dependent variable. Finally,
the degree of association is measured between the variance remaining in the depen-
dent variable and the non-controlled variable.

How to: In this exercise, you’ll compare current salary to beginning salary, after
controlling for previous experience.
1. From the menu, select Analyze > Correlate > Partial. (Figure 19).

FIGURE 19. Partial correlations window

2. Notice that this time, in addition to selecting the variables to be compared, you
can also select Controlling for.
3. Select Current Salary and Beginning Salary and move them to the Variables
pane.
4. Select Previous Experience and move it to the Controlling For pane.
5. Click Options to select the statistics you want displayed.
6. Select Means and standard deviations by clicking its check box.
7. Click Continue.
8. Click OK. The new output is displayed in the output window.

SPSS Step-by-Step 35
 Measuring association

9. In the contents pane of the output window, click Partial Corr, then click it again
to activate it. At the end of the text, type:

:Curr Sal X Beg Sal CF Prev Exp.

10. Click anywhere away from the title to apply the change.

Note: During your analysis, you’re likely to generate a great number of charts,
tables, and other output. Try to come up with a consistent abbreviation
scheme that will help you figure out at a glance what you’re looking at. In
the example above, the X stands for “by” and “CF” stands for “Controlling
For.”

Multiple correlation (multiple regression)

Multiple correlation looks at the association between one continuous variable
(often called the dependent variable) with a group of two or more continuous vari-
ables (usually called predictors).

One use for a multiple correlation is to find out if there is a relationship between an
independent variable and a dependent variable after controlling for a subset of all
other variables. In this sense the multiple correlation or multiple regression is used
as a more sophisticated method of exploring partial correlations.

When you run a step-wise multiple regression, SPSS will find the one variable in
the group of predictors which has the highest correlation with the dependent vari-
able. It will then statistically remove that variance from the dependent variable that
the predictor variable accounts for. The procedure will then go to the list of remain-
ing predictors and select the variable which has the highest correlation with the
remaining variance in the dependent variable, remove that variance, then select the
next predictor and so on until some criterion is met. Typical criteria that you can
specify are the amount of additional variance accounted, the level of statistical sig-
nificance for the change in variance accounted for, and the maximum number of
predictors that can be selected.

Example: In a study of the effectiveness of entitlement programs, you want to find

out which set of variables can best predict client’s income once they are no longer
receiving benefits. All entitlement data are quantitative, including time receiving
benefits, individual benefit values, length of job training, and family size. A single
categorical variable — minority/non-minority — is included in the calculations as a
binary variable. In this example, post-eligibility income is the dependent variable,

36 SPSS Step-by-Step
Measuring association

while the independent (or predictor) variables include value of benefits, length of
eligibility, and the like.

Crosstabs
To quote the famous purple book, “A crosstabulation is a joint frequency distribu-
tion of cases according to two or more classificatory variables. The display of the
distribution of cases by their position on two or more variables is the chief compo-
nent of contingency table analysis and is indeed the most commonly used analytic
method in the social sciences.”1 [Emphasis added.]

The Chi-square test can be used to determine whether the frequency distributions of
one or more categorical variables are statistically independent. The crosstab can be
used to provide measures of the associations of categorical variables. Some of the
measures of association are the contingency coefficient, phi, tau, gamma, etc..
These measures describe the degree to which the values of one variable predict or
vary with those of another.

Data requirements: Crosstabs require categorical data or continuous data recoded

into categories, such as income or age ranges. The frequencies for each variable in
the population should be approximately normal.

Suppose we had a group of 300 people for whom we knew hair color and eye color.
We could create a contingency table similar to the displayed in Table 1. In the table,
it appears that non-blue eyes and brown hair tend to go together, but because the
total number of people is different in each cell, it’s hard to arrive at a valid conclu-
sion.2

TABLE 1. Sample crosstab

Hair color:

Eye color Blond Brown Total

Blue 75 40 115
Non-blue 25 160 185
Total 100 200 300

1. SPSS: Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, Second Edition, by Norman H. Nie, et
al., McGraw Hill 1975, p. 218.
2. This example is based on the example given in the Purple book, ibid., p. 219.

SPSS Step-by-Step 37
 Measuring association

To help us determine if the counts of people in these four cells are random, we can
calculate the number of people we would expect in each cell if the distribution of
people with a particular eye color were independent of the distribution of people
with a particular hair color.

The expected frequency for any cell in a contingency table is the product of the row
frequency times the column frequency for that cell, divided by the total for the
table. Thus, the expected frequency for blond hair/blue eyes would be 115 X 100/
300 or 38.3 people. In fact, the observed frequency for this group is 75, indicating
that the distributions are not independent. Something is going on here.

TABLE 2. Observed/Expected Crosstab values

Hair color:

Eye color Blond Brown Total

Blue
Observed 75 40 115
Expected 38.8 76.7
Non-blue
Observed 25 160 185
The degrees of freedom for Expected 61.7 123.3
a contingency table is the Total 100 200 300
number of columns -1 times
the number of rows -1. To test whether the observed frequencies are statistically different from the
Conceptually, the degrees expected frequency, we calculate a Chi-square: For each cell subtract the expected
of freedom is a count of frequency (count) from the observed frequency, square the difference, and divide
how many cells in which by the expected value for that cell, then sum these values for all the cells.
you are free to enter any
number you want given that The greater the discrepancy between the expected and actual frequencies, the larger
you know the margins. In the Chi-square becomes. Whether there will be a statistically significant difference
general it indicates the depends on the size of the difference and the degrees of freedom. As the degrees of
number of data points you freedom increase, the larger the value of Chi-square needed to be statistically sig-
can specify before all nificant.
remaining data points are
determined.
How to: In this exercise, you’ll use a data file for hair color and eye color that
will generate the Chi-square table shown above.
1. From the menu, select File > Open > Data.
2. Navigate to the file named ChiSquare.sav and open it.
3. When prompted to save the current data, click Yes.

38 SPSS Step-by-Step
Measuring differences

4. From the menu, select Analyze > Descriptive Statistics > Crosstabs.
5. Select Hair Color and move it to the Columns pane.
6. Select Eye Color and move it to the Rows pane.
7. Click Statistics.
8. Select Chi-square by clicking its check box.
9. Click Continue.
10. Click Cells.
11. Select Observed and Expected.
12. Click Continue.
13. Click OK. The Chi-square results appear in the Output window. Notice that all
the significance levels are less than .001. Something is definitely going on here.

M e a suring diffe re nc e s

Typically, differences in one or more continuous dependent variables based on dif-

ferences in one of more categorical variables are evaluated using a t-test or an anal-
ysis of variance. If we have only one continuous dependent variable and only one
categorical independent variable with no more than two values, the t-test can be
used to look for differences. If we have more that one dependent continuous vari-
able or more than two values across the categorical independent variables or we
have both categorical and continuous independent variables, we need to use an
analysis of variance (ANOVA).

T-Tests
There are three types of t-tests:

An Independent Samples t-test is used when cases are randomly assigned to one of
two groups. After a differential treatment has been applied to the two groups, a
measurement is taken which is related to the effect of the treatment. The t-test is
calculated to determine if any difference between the two groups is statistically sig-
nificant.

A Paired Samples t-test can be used to evaluate differences between two groups
who have been matched on one or more characteristics or evaluate differences in
before/after measures on same person. If you want to use pre/post measures, make

SPSS Step-by-Step 39
 Measuring differences

sure the post-test is the same as the pre-test. This is one of the most common errors
in research.

A One Sample t-test is used to evaluate whether the mean of a continuous depen-
dent variable is different from zero. To test if the mean is different than some other
value, subtract that value from each observation and the test to see if the mean of
the new values is zero.

In the independent samples t-test, the purpose of randomly assigning the people to
groups is to control for the effect of other differences between people that might
have affected the effect we’re measuring. Using the matched pairs has the same
goal, but now the theory is that we have matched the subjects on the concomitant
variables.

What if you can’t randomly assign people to groups and you can’t match them? For
example, if you want to examine salary differences based on gender? One thing you
can do is assume that the only difference between people that could result in a dif-
ference in income is gender. With that assumption in hand, we can do an indepen-
dent sample t-test to see if there’s a gender difference in income.

If you’re one of those folks who think that assumption doesn’t pass the “smell” test,
you can go back to our earlier friend the correlation, put gender in as a binary vari-
able (where 1 is female and 0 is not female), and look at the correlation. This does
not mean that gender has caused the difference in salaries, but you can measure
how well gender is associated with income level. More sophisticated analyses
could be done by using partial correlations or multiple regression to control for con-
comitant factors.

How to: In this exercise, you’ll split a file based upon a single variable and test
the set of cases for each value of the variable as a separate sample. First
you’ll instruct SPSS to treat each group (in this case, each result from a
specific machine) as a separate sample; this procedure is called splitting
the file. Then you’ll run the T-test to determine whether all the machines
are meeting the production specifications.
1. From the menu, select File > Open > Data.
2. Navigate to the folder named SPSSTutorialData and open brakes.sav.
3. From the menu, select Data > Split File to open the Split File window (Figure
20).

40 SPSS Step-by-Step
Measuring differences

FIGURE 20. Split file window

4. Click Compare Groups.

5. Select Machine Number and move it to the Groups Based on pane. (Figure
21)

FIGURE 21. Completed Split File window

6. Click OK. Even though you haven’t created separate files, you have instructed
SPSS to treat each group within the file as if it were a separate sample, with a
group being defined by the machine number.
7. From the menu, select Analyze > Compare Means > One-Sample T Test (Figure
22). You’re going to test against a known value which in this case is the diame-
ter of the disc brake.

SPSS Step-by-Step 41
 Measuring differences

FIGURE 22. One-sample T-Test window

8. Select Disc Brake Diameter and move it to the Test Variables pane.
9. Select the text in the Test Value field and type:

322
10. Click Options to set the confidence level. (Figure 23)

FIGURE 23. One-sample T-Test: Options window

11. Change the confidence interval to 90.

12. Click Continue.
13. Click OK. The test results are displayed in the output window.

Homework: The exercise above is based on the SPSS tutorial. To find the
tutorial, select from the menu Help > Topics. In the keyword field,
type One-Sample T Test. Click Show Me.

ANOVA

If we have more than one dependent continuous variable or more than two values
across the categorical independent variables or we have both categorical and con-
tinuous independent variables, we need to use an analysis of variance to measure

42 SPSS Step-by-Step
Measuring differences

differences. There are a number of particularly useful special cases for the general
analysis of variance model.

If we have only one dependent continuous variable and one independent categorical
variable we can use a One-Way Analysis of Variance or One-Way ANOVA. If we
have only one dependent continuous variable, but more than one independent cate-
gorical variable we can use a general Univariate Analysis of Variance or Univariate
ANOVA. If we have one or more independent continuous variables, we can use the
Univariate Analysis of Covariance or Univariate ANCOVA

More advanced models are available for more than one dependent continuous vari-
able. If the model has one or more independent categorical variables, we would use
a Multivariate Analysis of Variance or MANOVA. If the model also included one
or more continuous independent variables, we would use a Multivariate Analysis of
Covariance or MANCOVA.1

One-Way ANOVA
One-way analysis of variance is an extension of the t-test in that, in a t-test you
have two groups, one that received a treatment and one that did not, while in a one-
way analysis of variance you have more than two groups where the groups received
different variation of the same treatment. For example, a treatment factor could be
whether you fry donuts in vegetable oil, butter, or lard.

How to: In this exercise, you’re going to identify the most effective number of
training hours to achieve a given result, with results scored between
zero and 100, 100 being the optimal score.
1. From the menu, select File > Open > Data. Navigate to the folder named SPSS-
TutorialData and open Training.sav.
2. First you’ll graph the means and standard error, so select Graphs > Error Bar
(Figure 24).

1. For more on determine the statistical procedure to use with your data, consult DataStep’s
Statstical Selection Guide, included with this tutorial.

SPSS Step-by-Step 43
 Measuring differences

FIGURE 24. Error bar window

3. You’ll use the default choices, so click Define. (Figure 25)

FIGURE 25. Error bar graph: defining summaries for groups of cases

4. Select Skills Training group and move it to the Category Axis field.
5. Select Score on training exam and move it to the Variable field.
6. In the Bars represent field, open the drop-down list and select Standard error
of mean. (Figure 26)

44 SPSS Step-by-Step
Measuring differences

FIGURE 26. Completed Error Bar window

7. Click OK. The results are displayed in the output window. (Figure 27)

FIGURE 27. Standard error graph for skills training groups

90
Mean +- 2 SE Score on training exam

80

70

60

50
N= 20 20 20

1 2 3

Skills training group

SPSS Step-by-Step 45
 Measuring differences

Note that the three bars do not represent equal variance among the three groups;
instead, variance decreases as days of training increase. These data may not be
appropriate for ANOVA. In the next step, you’ll run the ANOVA to test the
data.
8. From the menu, select Analyze > Compare Means > One-Way ANOVA. (Figure
28)

FIGURE 28. One-Way ANOVA window

9. Move Score on training exam to the Dependent List.

10. Move Skills training group to the Factor list.
11. Click Options. (Figure 29)

FIGURE 29. One-Way ANOVA Options window

46 SPSS Step-by-Step
Summary

12. Select Descriptive and Homogeneity of variance test by clicking their check
boxes.
13. Click Continue.
14. Click OK. The results appear in the output window.

Homework: This exercise is based on the One-Way ANOVA test in the SPSS
tutorial. The SPSS tutorial explains the meaning of the results and
the displayed output. To use the tutorial, select Help > Topics. In
the keyword field, type One-Way ANOVA. In the Topics Found
window, double-click One-Way ANOVA. In the Help window,
click Show Me to view the tutorial.

Sum m a r y
This chapter has provided you with a brief introduction to some of the capabilities
of the SPSS application. You should now feel comfortable navigating the interface,
creating contingency tables (crosstabs), conducting some of the most common sta-
tistical tests, and working with charts to present your data in a graphial format.
Most importantly, you should now know how to learn more about the SPSS func-
tions. You might even want to check out some of those 2,032 books at Ama-
zon.com. Yes, you have noticed correctly. Sometime between last week and this
week we lost two books in the search. Who knows, perhaps you’ll write the next
one.

SPSS Step-by-Step 47
 Summary

48 SPSS Step-by-Step