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SPSS (software)

Chapter · December 2017

DOI: 10.1002/9781118901731.iecrm0237

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 SPSS (Soware)

Felix Frey
LMU Munich
felix.frey@iw.lmu.de

To be published in:
J. P. Matthes, R. Potter, & C. S. Davis (Eds.). (in prep.). International Encyclopedia of Commu-
nication Research Methods. Wiley Blackwell.

Abstract

SPSS (currently officially “IBM® SPSS® Statistics”) is a commercially distributed soware suite
for data management and statistical analysis and the name of the company originally devel-
oping and distributing the program. Introduced in 1968, it helped revolutionize research
practices in the social sciences, enabling researchers to conduct complex statistical analyses
on their own. Presently, Windows, Mac and Linux versions of SPSS are available with major
version updates released every one to two years. SPSS is a comparably easy-to-handle statistics
program providing commonly used procedures. As such, it is widely used in academia includ-
ing communication studies, although facing increasingly tough competition from more com-
prehensive and free open-source soware.

SPSS is a commercially distributed soware suite for data management and statistical analysis.
Norman Nie, Dale Bent, and C. Hadlai Hull developed its rst version for mainframe comput-
ers in 1968 for Nie’s postgraduate project. Initially distributed informally, demand for the pro-
gram escalated with the publication of the rst SPSS manual in 1970 and Nie and Hull founded
SPSS Inc. in 1975. An IBM PC version of SPSS was released in 1984, Apple Macintosh and
Microso Windows implementations followed in 1990 and 1992, respectively (SPSS Inc.,
2009). Presently, IBM distributes Windows, Mac and Linux versions of SPSS with major up-
dates every one to two years. In 2009, IBM acquired SPSS Inc. (IBM, 2009) and SPSS became
“IBM® SPSS® Statistics”.
SPSS helped revolutionize research practices in the social sciences. As an easy to use
and comprehensive statistics program it enabled researchers to conduct complex statistical
analyses on big datasets on their own instead of being dependent on statisticians who knew
how to operate user-unfriendly programs on mainframe computers (Wellman, 1998).
SPSS is well documented with many textbooks available. Most of the program’s features
can be controlled by a point-and-click interface, though some are accessible only via command
syntax. As a comparably easy-to-handle statistics program providing commonly used proce-
dures, SPSS is widely used in academia and applied research. However, it is facing increasingly
tough competition especially from comprehensive free soware environments like R.
IBM SPSS Statistics minimally consists of “Statistics Base”. is module provides basic
data preparation, transformation, management, and charting capabilities as well as descriptive
and inferential procedures such as t-tests, ANOVA, linear and ordinal regression, contingency
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and correlation analysis, factor, cluster and discriminant analysis, and nonparametric tests.
SPSS’s range of functions can be expanded with separately priced extension modules such as
“Advanced Statistics” (ANCOVA, MANOVA, MANCOVA, repeated measures analysis, gener-
alized and mixed linear modeling), “Regression” (logistic and nonlinear regression), “Exact
Tests”, and ”Bootstrapping”. Also, free macros and extensions enable the integration of Python
and .NET code, make R accessible from within SPSS, add R functions like tobit, quantile, robust
and zero-in ated regression, propensity score matching, latent class analysis, Rasch model es-
timation, ordinal factor analysis, and basic Bayesian modeling to the SPSS menu bar or expand
SPSS’s capabilities in other ways. Limitations of SPSS persist in the eld of non-standard re-
gression, time series, and meta analysis. Also, structural equation modeling and power analysis
are not included in SPSS but available as standalone products “IBM SPSS Amos” and “IBM
SPSS SamplePower”, respectively.

References
IBM. (2009). IBM completes acquisition of SPSS Inc. Retrieved from http://www-
03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/28522.wss
SPSS Inc. (2009). About SPSS Inc. Retrieved from http://www.spss.com.hk/corpinfo/his-
tory.htm
Wellman, B. (1998). Doing it ourselves. In D. Clawson (Ed.), Required reading. Sociology's most
in uential books (pp. 71–78). Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

Further Reading
Bronstad, P. M., & Hemmesch, A. R. (2010). SPSS. In N. J. Salkind (Ed.), Encyclopedia of re-
search design (pp. 1418–1421). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Field, A. (2013). Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS statistics (4th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.