Use of SPSS for Two-Way Tests

main content Use of SPSS for Two-Way Chi-Square Analysis You may want to print this topic and have it beside you while working on it. First, a reminder of our data: Table 3

Number of Children in each of four seating positions obtaining different levels of grade
Observed Grade In Immediate Front Front Middle Rear middle Rear Total Top third Middle third Bottom third Total Basic Sequence 13 20 11 44 8 23 12 43 10 27 12 49 3 18 21 42 34 88 56 178

Stage 1
The basic sequence for running two-way analyses is as follows: 1) In terms of how data are entered, we enter the data as we did for the one-way analysis, except of course, we now have two variables (seating position and grade) instead of one, as shown below. Following the example below, open SPSS and create a datafile.

Stages 2 and 3 Once you have done this, go to the Data menu, and select Weight cases. In the dialogue box that appears, select Weight cases by and choose the third column, Frequency as the weighting variable, by clicking on it and moving it using the arrow button (see below). Click OK to enact this.

Go to the Analyze menu, and choose Descriptive Statistics/Crosstabs.

Stages 4, 5 and 6 In the dialogue box that appears, select your row and column variables by clicking on each in turn to highlight it, and then using the horizontal arrow buttons to move them into the correct box (NB it doesnt matter which variable you assign to row and which to column, other than in terms of which way round these are in the table that is generated):

Click on the Statistics button, and choose Chi-square.

Under Cells choose Observed and Expected counts. Under Exact, make sure that asymptotic only is selected. NB be sure to click on Continue rather than simply closing these dialogue boxes, otherwise your settings will be ignored.

Click on OK to run the analysis. Task 10 Run the analysis as described above. Compare your output against the one provided here. Then check that the values you obtain are as you worked out before, when doing the calculation by hand.

The output file contains the following 3 tables, displaying:

Table with the title: Case Processing Summary: the number of cases; Table with the title: Grade Level by Seating Position Crosstabulation: the contingency table, which contains both observed and expected values, as in Table 1, in along with row and column totals;

Table with the title: Chi-square Tests: the Pearson and likelihood ratio chi-square values (use the former), plus degrees of freedom and significance; Information on minimum expected frequencies, as described above, is provided at the footnote of the third Table.

Discussion When doing the calculations by hand we found that = 12.8, df = 6 and p <.05, duplicating the results from SPSS. Note: Notice how at the end of the SPSS table, the minimum expected count is calculated, along with how many of the cells have expected count less than 5 (zero on this occasion).