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SPSS for Beginners

This guide provides a basic introduction to SPSS. It is recommended that have an in-depth understanding of the various statistical methods to use for your research study.

Descriptives

The Descriptives procedure is used to find the measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode) and measures of dispersion (range, standard deviation, variance, minimum and maximum) and measures of kurtosis and skewness. This procedure is best suited to describe continuous variables.

HOW TO RUN DESCRIPTIVES

  1. Click on Analyze. Select Descriptive Statistics. Select Descriptives. 
  2. Add whichever variable(s) you would like to calculate descriptive statistics for into the “Variable(s)” column. 
  3. Click on Options and check the boxes for which statistics you would like to be generated. Click Continue to save your choices. 
  4. Click OK to run the test (results will appear in the output window).

The Frequencies procedure is used to generate statistics (similar to the Descriptives procedure) and graph summaries. Graph options include bar charts (best for categorical variables), pie charts, and histograms (best for continuous variables).

HOW TO RUN FREQUENCIES

  1. Click on Analyze. Select Descriptive Statistics. Select Frequencies. 
  2. Add whichever variable(s) you would like to calculate descriptive statistics or create plots for into the “Variables” column. 
  3. Click Statistics to select which descriptive statistics to generate the output, and / or click Charts to generate plots using frequencies or percentages. Click Continue to save your choices. 
  4. Click OK to run the test (results will appear in the output window).

The Explore procedure is used to examine whether a variable is normally distributed with statistics (Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk) and plots (Q-Q Plot, Stem and Leaf Plot, and Box Plot). You can also run certain descriptive statistics (similar to the Descriptives procedure).

HOW TO RUN EXPLORE

  1. Click on Analyze. Select Descriptive Statistics. Select Explore. 
  2. To generate descriptive statistics, click Statistics and check the “Descriptives” box. Click Continue to save your choices. 
  3. To assess whether a variable is normally distributed, click Plots and check the “Normality plots with tests” box. Click Continue to save your choices. 
  4. Click OK to run the test (results will appear in the output window).

The Crosstabs procedure is used to create a crosstabulation or contingency table. It is used to show the relationship between two or more categorical (nominal) variables. This procedure is often used to calculate the Chi-Square test and correlations (see “Inferential Statistics” section for details).

HOW TO RUN CROSSTABS 

  1. Click on Analyze. Select Descriptive Statistics. Select Crosstabs. 
  2. Place one or more variables in “Row(s)” and one or more variables in “Columns”.
  3. Click Cells to ensure the “Observed” box is checked. Click Continue to save your choices.
  4. Click OK to run the test (results will appear in the output window).

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