Contents & Introduction

Preface to the Third Edition

Introduction

Choosing an Appropriate Statistical Procedure

Where to Find Things in SPSS

1. Introduction

2. Using Windows

3. Loading Data and Printing

4. General Descriptive Statistics

5. Correlation Coefficients

6. Chi-square Tests

7. Independent-samples, Paired-samples, and One-sample t Tests

8. Mann–Whitney U and Wilcoxon Matched-pairs Tests

9. One-way Analysis of Variance

10. Multifactorial Analysis of Variance

11. Repeated-measures Analysis of Variance

12. Multiple Regression

13. Log-linear Analysis

14. Factor Analysis

15. Charts and Graphs

16. Handling Variables and Large Data Files

17. Syntax Windows

Appendix 1: Handling Dates

Appendix 2: Exporting and Importing Excel Files

References

Index

Back to the top

 

Preface to the Third Edition

With the help of this Crash Course, you should be able to learn SPSS for Windows quickly and painlessly, provided that you have some background knowledge of statistics. The package is not hard to use, and the basics can be explained without fuss. In our experience, busy people dislike spending large amounts of time learning computer applications. We believe that most SPSS manuals are far more cumbersome than they need to be. Learning SPSS for Windows with more conventional manuals is time-consuming and quite an ordeal.

This book is designed to make things quicker and easier. It grew out of a specific need, and it proved popular because it filled a gap in the market, although since the first edition, some flattering imitations have appeared. Almost all computational examples in A Crash Course are taken from real data in published research, rather than hypothetical examples such as are found in most statistics and computing books, but we have chosen small data sets to minimize the time and boredom involved in inputting data.

The contents and presentation of the book were greatly improved by usability trials that we carried out for the first edition. We sent a rough draft of the book to 15 students and academics at a dozen different universities, all of whom had expressed a wish to learn SPSS for Windows but had no previous knowledge or experience of it, and we asked them to work through it carefully, making notes of everything that they found unclear or felt could be improved, and keeping a record of the time taken to complete the course. The results were enormously helpful. Our readers came up with comments, criticisms, and helpful suggestions for every chapter. These responses enabled us to produce a revised version incorporating a vast number of improvements, big and small, and we know of no other SPSS manual that has had the benefit of such systematic feedback from the end-users for whom it is intended. The time taken to complete the course in the usability trials ranged from five and a half to nine hours, with a mean of just under seven hours (6 hours 52 minutes, to be exact), usually spread out over several sessions. The content has expanded slightly since then, but most readers should still be able to complete the course within about 10 hours.

The first two chapters are written with complete beginners in mind. They describe the basic features of Windows and explain from the very beginning how to get the SPSS package up and running. If you already have some familiarity with Windows-based applications, then we suggest that you just skim these introductory chapters, paying attention to the less familiar information in sections 2.3 and 2.4. Chapter 3 describes how data are loaded and printed in SPSS for Windows, and this will also be fairly familiar territory to many readers. The remaining chapters describe the most widely used statistical techniques and graphic facilities available in SPSS for Windows.

Most of the procedures covered in this book are included in the SPSS for Windows Base System. The exceptions are repeated-measures analysis of variance (chapter 11) and log-linear analysis (chapter 13), both of which are supplied with the SPSS Advanced Models Option (originally called Advanced Statistics) that has to be purchased separately. If you don’t have the Advanced Modules option, then you should just skip those chapters.

The first edition of the Crash Course, published in 2000, was designed for use with Versions 8 and 9 of the SPSS. The second edition, published in 2003, was for Versions 10 and 11. The changes for the second edition were largely matters of detail, but there were many of them. In almost every paragraph, small alterations had to be made to accommodate changes in SPSS from Versions 8 to 11. We are very explicit about exactly which keys to press, so even minor alterations necessitated textual changes. For the second edition, in response to requests from readers, we also added two completely new chapters, chapter 13 on log-linear analysis and chapter 14 on factor analysis.

This third edition has become necessary because of further minor modifications introduced in SPSS Versions 12 and 13. The procedures themselves have remained largely unchanged, but various small improvements and alterations to the Data Editor, Output Viewer, Chart Editor, and dialog boxes mean that a user running SPSS 12 or 13 cannot always follow the key strokes precisely as set out in the second edition. The principal substantive changes for this edition are the addition of two short chapters, one on “Handling Variables and Large Data Files” (chapter 16), another on “Syntax Windows” (chapter 17), and a new appendix on “Exporting and Importing Excel Files”. We have deleted the section on importing text files, and we have rewritten some passages to improve clarity and readability. The earlier editions of this Crash Course were well received by readers, many of whom have been in touch with us, and there has been a steady demand for it throughout the English-speaking world. But there is always room for improvement, and the new co-author for the third edition has brought a fresh pair of cerebral hemispheres to the task.

SPSS 10 and 11 run under Windows 95, 98, 2000, or NT operating systems, and later versions also run under Windows ME and (from SPSS 11.0.1 onwards) Windows XP. The Macintosh versions of SPSS for Windows operate with only minor deviations from the procedures that we describe in this book.

We are grateful to everyone who took part in the usability trials, and to others who have offered technical advice and help of various kinds. In particular, we wish to express our gratitude to Joseph Amoah-Nyako, John Armstrong, John Beckett, Sarah Bird, Mark Bowers, Kenneth Cowley, Simon Dunkley, Joanne Emery, Sarah Fishburn, Gerry Gardner, Erica Grossman, Rob Hemmings, Richard Joiner, Geoff Lowe, Sandy MacRae, Rhonda Pearce, Ian Pountney, Caroline Salinger, Berni Simmons, Kathy Smith, Helga Sneddon, Jonathan Stirk, David Stretch, Catherine Sugden, Johnny Sung, Carolyn Tarrant, Cathy Thorp, Gary van Heerden, Stephen L. White, Sue Wilson, and Alison Wray.

We have made the book as straightforward as possible, but we haven’t made it totally idiot-proof, partly because that would not have been possible and partly because only an idiot would want to read an idiot-proof book. But we’ve done our best to make it clear, explicit, and user-friendly, and we’d very much appreciate hearing from students and researchers about any further improvements that might be worth introducing into future editions. We’ll acknowledge everyone who offers helpful suggestions unless they ask us not to. Feel free to e-mail us directly about the contents or presentation of the book, or write to us care of the publisher, but please don’t ask us for statistical help or advice.

Andrew Colman (amc@le.ac.uk)
Briony Pulford (bdp5@le.ac.uk)

Back to the top

Introduction

SPSS is an abbreviation of Statistical Product and Service Solutions (formerly Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), and it is distributed by SPSS Inc. of Chicago, Illinois, USA. The detailed operations described in this book apply specifically to Versions 10, 11, 12, and 13, and the screenshots are from Version 13. For other versions of Windows and of SPSS, there are slight variations, but most of the essential features remain the same.

SPSS for Windows is the oldest and most popular of the many packages of computer programs currently available for statistical analysis. Although it is extremely powerful, it is relatively easy to use once you’ve been taught the rudiments. We can teach you the rudiments quite quickly, and you’ll certainly need our guidance, because the package is not self-explanatory and you cannot simply teach yourself to use it just by fiddling around and using the help menu, as one of us was annoyed to discover some years ago. For both of us, and many people we’ve spoken to, the chief problem in learning to use it is that the various manuals on the market – some issued by SPSS Inc. and many more by independent writers – are too detailed, too complicated, and above all too long to provide the quick introduction that we need. This book is aimed at readers like ourselves who lack the time to plough through thick manuals, or the patience to submit to a screen-based tutor, but who want to be able to pick up the essential skills for performing standard statistical analyses with SPSS for Windows, and who prefer to learn these skills rapidly and painlessly. If you are one of those people who are happy to spend many evenings and weekends learning SPSS for Windows the long way, then our considered advice to you is that you should get out more and develop some stimulating leisure activities.

Chapter 2 will begin with a general introduction to the use of Windows, focusing on the essential aspects you need for using SPSS for Windows. If you are already familiar with Windows, you can safely skip most of the elementary information in chapter 2, but you should read sections 2.3 and 2.4. The chapters that follow will tell you how to load data from disk, how to print data, how to obtain descriptive statistics, including means, standard deviations, and variances, how to compute Pearson’s correlation coefficient and Spearman’s rho, chi-square tests, t tests for independent and paired samples, Mann–Whitney U tests, Wilcoxon matched-pairs tests, analysis of variance in all its major forms, multiple regression, log-linear analysis, and factor analysis, how to draw charts and graphs with SPSS for Windows, how to change and create variables, and how to work with SPSS syntax windows. The procedures covered by this book include the most important ones used by psychologists and other social and behavioural scientists. Once you’ve mastered these techniques, you should have little difficulty teaching yourself other procedures available in SPSS for Windows.

This book will not teach you statistics. We assume that you already know enough about statistics to understand what assumptions are made about the data that you enter into SPSS for Windows, what procedures to use for analysing the data, and how to interpret the results. There is no point trying to analyse data unless you know what you are doing. If you need to brush up on your basic knowledge of statistics, there are many good books for you to consult. Among the ones that we’re happy to recommend are Hays (1994), Howell (2004), Huck (2004), Norman and Streiner (2000), and Pagano (2004). (Bibliographical details of publications cited in the text can all be found in the list of references at the back of this book.) We have, none the less, included very brief introductions to the essential ideas behind the statistical procedures at the beginning of most chapters, and in the preliminary pages there is a flow chart to help you choose an appropriate statistical procedure and a table showing where to find things in SPSS for Windows. The flow chart and table are restricted to the most commonly used procedures that are specifically dealt with in this book. There are far more statistical procedures available in SPSS for Windows, and both the flow chart and the table are only rudimentary, in the spirit of the book as a whole.

Even if you know what you’re doing, the output that you obtain will be of little value if your data are of poor quality. This nugget of truth is expressed in the computer slang word gigo, which stands for garbage in, garbage out. Awesome though it is, SPSS for Windows is not a magic oven that can miraculously transform garbage input into haute cuisine output. To get useful output, you need properly collected data and carefully considered statistical analysis.

We hope and expect that this book will put you on the road to becoming a fluent and efficient user of SPSS for Windows. Believe it or not, data analysis is fun, once you get the hang of it. Our usability trials, referred to in the preface, suggest that our Crash Course in SPSS for

Back to the top