Archive for April, 2006
Start SPSS, and create a new data file (Choose Type in data in the first dialog window). You now see a file that looks like a Microsoft Excel file. In the bottom of your screen, you see two tabs. We see that the tab “Data View” is selected. This is the place to type in your data. Before we take that step, we have to define our variables. Next to the tab “Data View” we see the tab “Variable View“, click on that tab. When you have clicked this tab, you get the following screen:
(click on thumbnail to get the big version)
April 29th, 2006
andris
Today Giuseppe from Italy sent us the following question:
“How can i translate spss into the italian language?”
SPSS is available in several different languages, namely English, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Polish, Korean, and Russian. The website of SPSS says you should “contact your local office to find out version information and more”. Visit the SPSS website to find a list of local offices. And Guiseppe, especially for you, the SPSS website in Italian. 
If you have any more questions about SPSS, please submit your question!
Permanent link to this post (89 words, estimated 21 secs reading time)
April 29th, 2006
andris
Many visitors of our blog are searching for information about the one sample t-test.
You perform a one-sample t-test when you want to determine if the mean value of a target variable is different from a hypothesized value.
To perform a one-sample t-test in SPSS. Choose Analyze>Compare Means>One-sample t-test.
Move the variable of interest to the Test variable(s) box. Change the test value to the hypothesized value. Click the OK button.
The output from this analysis will contain the following sections.
One-Sample Statistics. Provides the sample size, mean, standard deviation, and standard error of the mean for the target variable.
April 26th, 2006
mark
Ivy sent us an e-mail about investigating the interaction effect of independent variables. MANOVA (multivariate analysis of variance) is a statistical procedure that allows you to determine if a set of categorical predictor variables can explain the variability in a set of continuous response variables.
In SPSS you can perform a MANOVA as follows:
- Choose Analyze -> General Linear Model -> Multivariate.
- Move the DVs (dependent variables) you want to examine to the Dependent Variables box.
- Move any categorical IVs (independent variables) to the Fixed Factor(s) box.
- Move any continuous IVs to the Covariate(s) box.
- Click OK and there you have your output.
April 25th, 2006
andris
This Friday we got a question from Els, who has a problem with making her stacked bar graphs look good:
“As a trainee I am now analysing the results of a customer satisfactory investigation. Many people advised me to use SPSS, so I did.
Most of the questionnaire questions are built the same way (very dissatisfied, dissatisfied, satisfied, very satisfied).
The report will be devised in subjects (price, quality, reaction speed,etc). Each subject contains around 5 questions.
For each subject I made a horizontal graph in which all 5 questions regarding that subject are being displayed. This way I will analyze around 5 questions in each graph, as in this example.
April 22nd, 2006
mark
This weekend we got a question from Kat, who is desperately 
looking for our help. She is working on a project with a lot of data in Excel:
“I am in the middle of a project for which I have constructed a large table in Microsoft Excel.
The table consists of variables going across the top, and cases down the side. The cells contain numbers (ie. the frequency of each variable within each case). Many of the cells have no number or the variable has zero frequency in that case.
April 19th, 2006
andris
We have a great website visitor programme, called Google Analytics. With this we get a lot of information about you, our visitor. Not too personal however, so you don’t have to worry. We get to see what you search for, how long you stay, if you come back and how many times. Also we see on which links you click. We found out that most of the people click on the category “Questions and answers“. We decided that we should you help you a little bit, and give you a more easy search digging into this category. To do so, we have added subcategories in this category, based on the steps people normally take when using SPSS. Every question we answer or tip / trick we write, we will place in one of these subcategories. We hope this will make life with SPSS for you a little bit easier.
April 13th, 2006
andris
The SPSS 14.0.2 patch is now available at the SPSS site. This is a regularly scheduled patch release. You can find a description of the patch and installation instructions at the above link. The patch is for the English version of SPSS 14, other languages will be available soon. You have to login, but you can also use “guest” as your userid and password to access the patch.
Permanent link to this post (69 words, estimated 17 secs reading time)
April 12th, 2006
mark
Zakya asked us another question. After getting his Excel data into SPSS, he wanted to find possible correlations between a couple of variables. Zakya, please find below an explanation on finding correlations using the Pearson correlation analysis.
The Pearson correlation analysis test can be used to find correlations between responses of nominal variables.
This is a preview of Finding correlations using the Pearson correlation analysis.
. Read the full post (287 words and 2 images, estimated 1:09 mins reading time)
April 11th, 2006
mark
This weekend we got a question from Zakya, who desperately needs information on how to import Excel data into SPSS.
Actually, importing from SPSS is not that hard at all. But before you import, there are some steps to take to make importing more easy:
- Close the Excel file (otherwise SPSS will give an error message)
- Make a header row in Excel with column names (keep them brief and descriptive)
- Do not mix up numbers and text in the same column
April 10th, 2006
andris
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