One of the major assumption for

parametric statistics is data in the

population must be normally
distributed

How to check whether your data meet

the above assumption?

Use Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)

in SPSS

Kolmogorov-
SPSS provides two Smirnov
statistics: Shapiro-Wilk
Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test (KS) Shapiro-Wilk Test (SW)

To test for differences in the shape of two sample The Shapiro-Wilk test examines if a variable is
distributions. normally distributed in some population.

Serves the similar purpose as the Kolmogorov-

Compares the overall shape of distributions
Smirnov test.

Type of Data: Univariate, continuous data Type of Data: Univariate, continuous data

As a rule of thumb, we conclude that a variable is not normally distributed if “Sig.” < 0.05.

Null hypothesis states that data are taken from normal distributed population.
If p-value<0.05, reject null hypothesis of normal distributed data, the sample data is non-normally
distributed.
P-value <0.05, Reject null hypothesis of normal distribution
Conclusion: sample data not normally distributed
 Your data meet the assumption of normality.
 If the sig-value > alpha (0.05)

 SPSS also produces Normality plots:

 Normal Q-Q plot.
 Detrended Normal Q-Q plot

 Your data can be considered to be normally distributed

 if majority of the points in the Detrended Normal Q-
Q plot are within -0.3 and +0.3

 Data can be considered normal

 if skewness is between -1 and +1. However, values
between ±2 are in many cases acceptable
Click Analyze -> Descriptive Statistics -> Descriptives
-> select Kurtosis and Skewness
 Samples below 50: use the z value. -1.96 and
+1.96 (Z scores for kurtosis and skewness are
computed by dividing the skewness and kurtosis
by their SE)
 Samples between 50 and 300: use a more liberal
z range. -3.29 and +3.29
 Larger samples:
 Absolute skewness value between -2 and
+2.
 Absolute kurtosis value between -7 and +7.