STATISTICAL PACKAGE FOR SOCIAL SCIENCES (SPSS)

BY
LUCY WANGARI
What is SPSS?
Statistical Package for social sciences, and it's used by various kinds of researchers for complex statistical data analysis.
It was developed by International Business Machines (IBM) for data management and various statistical analysis.
Installing SPSS
SPSS is not a free tool and therefore you will be required to pay for the package.
1. Click here https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Cb1qj_AfwNFCCRf0PDRYuP084KMM8C38?usp=sharing to
download this version of SPSS
2. Open set up to begin the installation process

3. Click next and accept the terms and conditions in all steps.
4. Select finish and SPSS is ready.
> click next and grant permission to complete the process.

Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, analysis, interpretation, presentation, and organization of data.
Types of Statistics
Descriptive Statistics -  involves organizing, displaying, and describing data.
Inferential Statistics - involves drawing conclusions about a population based on information contained in a sample
taken from that population.
Types of Data
1. Qualitative data- it is descriptive data. Example- She can run fast, He is thin.
2. Quantitative data- it is numerical information. Example- An Octopus is an Eight legged creature. Types –
a. Discrete data- has a particular fixed value. It can be counted
b. Continuous data- is not fixed but has a range of data. It can be measured.

A Tour of SPSS Tools

Variable View
A variable is any characteristics, number or quantity that can be measured or counted e.g. age, sex, etc.
There are two types of variables in SPSS such as;
Numeric Variables –it exclusively contains numbers and the mathematical operations such as addition and multiplication can be done
on them
String variables –it may contain letters, numbers and other characters.
Numeric variables have several different formats such as date, Dollar etc. that shouldn't be confused with variable types.
Variable Measurement Levels
SPSS measurement Levels are limited to nominal, ordinal or scale variable.
1. Nominal variable – it is used to label variables in different classifications and does not imply a quantitative value or
order. i.e. Gender, Sex, Marital status etc.
2. Ordinal variable – here, an order is depicted. i.e. a likert scale that measures grades, satisfaction happiness etc. *
3. Scale Variable- this is a variable that has a numeric value. It can be considered in two ways
› Interval Scale-Here, the order of the variable is kwon as well as the difference between the variables. For example, What in your
family income. Some Likert scale can be classified as interval sale if arithmetic operations can be done on it.
› Ratio Scale Example, what is your weight in kilogram? (Less than 50 kilograms, 51-70 kilograms 71-90 kilograms, 91-110 kilograms,
more than 110 kilograms.
Data View
Each row in the Data View represents a case and each column represents a variable. A case here means independent
observation.

Viewing Multiple Sections

Within the data view, you can view multiple sections of your data that are far apart in the spreadsheet
To split the window, click Window>Split
Looking up a specific Case or Variable
This is a useful option for large data sets that include hundreds of cases and variables.
To jump to a specific case number:
› Click edit >go to case.
› In the go to case number list, enter the case number or use the up/down arrows on the right to select the case
number.
› For variable, it is edit>go to variable. In the go to variable list, type the variable name or select the variable name
from the drop-down menu.
› Click Go and SPSS will jump.
Data in SPSS
You can either enter data directly in the data view or import data from other formats into SPSS. i.e. excel(.xls format)
to enter data from EXCEL, click File> Open> Data.
Entering Data from EXCEL
Change the Files of type to .xls format to find an excel file.
Saving a file in SPSS
After importing your data, go to the variable view and ensure the variable types are correctly defined and then save it
₋ SPSS stores all the data content in .sav format. To save your date, go to >File>save as and then you can now define
your data as you wish.
Defining data in the variable view
NAMING A VARIABLE
No space between the words (Use Camel case i.e. capitalizing each new word e.g.. WhatIsYourName or you can use
underscores e.g. Wha_is_your_name with no periods, commas, question marks at the end of the Name.
› Name cannot begin with a special character(#, @, &,...)
› Cannot begin with a number (Mast begin with a letter).
› Each variable name must be unique.
› 64 characters or less.
More on Variables

Set the variable Type to either String, numeric or various type of numeric variable. In the label
column, you can write the whole variable e.g. What is your?, How dare you? In the values column,
you can define the levels of the variable e.g. for Degree, 1-LT High school, 2-High school, 3-Junior
college etc.