How to Use SPSS - Lesson 1 - The SPSS Environment and Variable Properties

Mike's SPSS Tutorials Lesson 1

This video series is intended to help you learn how to analyze data using SPSS for your statistical needs. Lesson 1 introduces the SPSS window, it's various environments and what each environment does. I also provide basic guidance on how to create a data set by making a new variable with specified properties and how to enter it's data. Finally, I provide some simple rules to insuring a clean data set so that future analyses can be run cleanly and without difficulty.

Helpful Notes:

1. SPSS differs from other statistical software such as SAS in that it is menu driven. You could also create SPSS programs through coding, but the strength of SPSS lies in it's easy-to-use menu system for analysis.

2. Here are the three primary "environments" that SPSS uses:

A. OUTPUT WINDOW: where output is shown in tree structure with it's corresponding SPSS code

B. Data Editor Window, DATA VIEW: the spreadsheet environment for your data to easily see and manipulate data on the fly

C. Data Editor Window, VARIABLE VIEW: the listing environment for your data sets variables to quickly check and edit the properties of each variable or to create new variables easily

3. Using self-descriptive variable names, specifying the variable type, width and precision, as well as adding labels, and a scale of measurement can make sure that your variables remain easy to read and free from errors in the future.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• How
• To
• SPSS
• Statistics
• Epidemiology
• Biostatistics