Week 9 SPSS: Using ‘crosstabulations’

Descriptives is the general term applied to producing Frequency tables and Crosstabulation
tables (crosstabs) for categorical data, and tables presenting summary statistics such as the
mean and standard deviation (SD) for scale data. Descriptives are very useful and can often
(but not always!) be quite straightforward to produce; they are therefore a very good place
to start.

We are often interested in differences between categories, for example gender differences,
and crosstabulation tables (usually referred to simply as ‘crosstabs’) are very useful for this.

Open the SPSS file ‘swanksville.sav’. This file contains fictitious data relating to: gender,
street, income, age and occupation. As usual the first column contains the respondent ID
number. We will see how gender relates to the job the residents have. Go to ‘Analyse’, then
‘Descriptive statistics’ then ‘Crosstabs’. The resulting dialogue box lets you choose which
variable to make the table row, and which to make the table column. Click ‘gender’ across
to column and ‘occupation’ across to row. Click on OK and the following table appears:

occupation of main income earner * Gender of main income earner Crosstabulation

Count
Gender of main income earner
male female Total
occupation of main income professional footballer 1 0 1
earner
investment banker 5 2 7
Teacher 5 8 13
charity worker 4 5 9
Total 15 15 30

We can see that most investment bankers are male and most teachers are female.
Percentages are very useful with these tables and SPSS will calculate them. Go back to the
dialogue box and click on ‘cells’. Under the percentages option we can choose ‘row’,
‘column’ or ‘total’. There is no rule as to whether row or column is more useful as they tell
us different things. First of all choose ‘row’ to create that table.

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 occupation of main income earner * Gender of main income earner Crosstabulation

Gender of main income earner

male Female Total
occupation of main professional Count 1 0 1
income earner footballer
% within occupation of main
100.0% .0% 100.0%
income earner
investment banker Count 5 2 7
% within occupation of main
71.4% 28.6% 100.0%
income earner
teacher Count 5 8 13
% within occupation of main
38.5% 61.5% 100.0%
income earner
charity worker Count 4 5 9
% within occupation of main
44.4% 55.6% 100.0%
income earner
Total Count 15 15 30
% within occupation of main
50.0% 50.0% 100.0%
income earner

We can now see the percentages broken down by gender. This is useful as we can say that
71.4% of investment bankers are male and 61.5% of teachers female. What this table does
not tell us is which profession is most common for males and for females. Go back to the
dialogue box again and change ‘row’ percentages’ to ‘column’ percentages.

occupation of main income earner * Gender of main income earner Crosstabulation

Gender of main income earner

male Female Total
occupation of main professional Count 1 0 1
income earner footballer
% within Gender of main
6.7% .0% 3.3%
income earner
investment banker Count 5 2 7
% within Gender of main
33.3% 13.3% 23.3%
income earner
teacher Count 5 8 13
% within Gender of main
33.3% 53.3% 43.3%
income earner
charity worker Count 4 5 9
% within Gender of main
26.7% 33.3% 30.0%
income earner
Total Count 15 15 30
% within Gender of main
100.0% 100.0% 100.0%
income earner

We can now see that equal percentages of males are investment bankers and teachers,
closely followed by charity workers. The situation for females is rather different in that the
majority are teachers.

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With larger samples it is possible to break this information down even further by using
layers. Imagine we are interested in occupation not only by gender but also by the street
where people live.

Go back to the dialogue box and by highlighting and clicking move ‘gender’ to layer 1,
‘occupation’ to row and ‘street’ to column. Remove the column percentage and click OK.
This results in:

occupation of main income earner * street name * Gender of main income earner Crosstabulation
Count
street name
we've loadsa we've dosh sycamore we've no
Gender of main income earner dish too avenue dosh Total
Male occupation of professional
1 0 0 0 1
main income footballer
earner
investment banker 1 3 1 0 5
Teacher 0 0 2 3 5
charity worker 2 0 2 0 4
Total 4 3 5 3 15
Female occupation of investment banker 1 1 0 0 2
main income Teacher 0 0 2 6 8
earner
charity worker 2 3 0 0 5
Total 3 4 2 6 15

Take some time to look at this table to understand how it has broken the sample down.
Then add row and column percentages to understand how they work. It is possible to have
more than one layer, but remember that for meaningful results the sample needs to be
large enough to accommodate this.

It is possible to copy tables directly from SPSS to a Microsoft Word document and quite
straightforward.

 Click on the table in the SPSS output, a box appears around it with a red arrow
to indicate that the table has been selected;
 Right click anywhere within the box and select ‘Copy’;
 Right click where you want the table to appear in the word document and
select ‘paste’;
 If necessary, the table titles can be changed to something more user friendly.

Warning! If you accidentally double click the SPSS table right clicking will not work.
You’ll have to ‘un’ click and try again