East Carolina University
Department of Psychology
Linked here are Word documents containing lessons designed to teach the novice how to use SPSS for basic statistical analysis. The documents include the data, or links to the data, for the analyses used as examples. I grant permission to all to employ these lessons for noncommercial, educational purposes, as long as the documents are reproduced only in their entirety and include my copyright notice or name and address.
If it is multivariate analysis you wish to do, check out my page Multivariate Analysis with PASW/SPSS.
Dr. Karl L. Wuensch
Department of Psychology
East Carolina University
Introductory Lessons
An Introduction to SPSS for Windows -- booting SPSS, entering data, basic descriptive statistics including schematic plots, saving data and output.
Using SPSS to Explore the INTROQ Data File -- importing data from a plain text file, assigning value labels, recoding variables, contingency tables and Pearson Chi-Square, bivariate linear correlation.
Using SPSS to Screen Data -- finding out-of-range data, outliers, and violations of normality assumptions and transforming to reduce skewness.
Probability Functions
Obtaining Exact Significance Levels With SPSS -- given value of the test statistic (and degrees of freedom, if relevant), obtain the p value -- Z, binomial, Chi-Square, t, and F.
Using SPSS to Obtain a Binomial Probability -- Transform, Compute.
Binomial Critical Value -- Example using SPSS to find critical value for a binomial test.
Chi-Square and Contingency Tables
Breaking Down a Contingency Table -- for example, from a 3 x 2 table to three 2 x 2 tables
One-Way Chi-Square Goodness of Fit Test -- often mistakenly employed when a contingency table analysis is what should have been done.
Two-Dimensional Contingency Table Analysis with SPSS -- Pearson Chi-square, phi, and odds ratios.
Weighting Cases in SPSS -- most often useful when you enter contingency table data -- for each cell in the table you need only one row in your SPSS data file.
Linear Correlation/Regression
Correlation Analysis -- brief introduction
Alternate version -- same material, different data.
Correlation and Regression Analysis -- linear, bivariate and trivariate
T Tests
T Tests and Related Statistics: SPSS -- one sample, correlated, and independent samples t tests, point biserial r, split file.
Confidence Intervals for Cohen's d -- for one-sample or two independent samples.
Correlation and Regression Analysis: SPSS -- linear correlation, both bivariate and multivariate.
ANOVA and ANCOVA
One-Way Independent Samples ANOVA with SPSS -- including trend analysis and pairwise comparisons.
Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA with SPSS -- including pairwise contrasts with Mann-Whitney/Wilcoxon
Two-Way Independent Samples ANOVA with SPSS -- including tests of simple main effects.
One-Way Within-Subjects ANOVA with SPSS -- multivariate and traditional tests.
Nonorthogonal ANOVA with SPSS -- includes an introduction to reading text data files.
ANCOV and Matching with Confounded Variables -- an introduction to the analysis of covariance with an illustration of interpretative difficulties when the covariate is correlated with the "independent" variable.
Miscellaneous
COMPUTE IF -- SPSS COMPUTE IF argument1 AND argument2 AND argument3
Creating a Coding Variable in SPSS -- using Compute and Recode and the system variable $CASENUM.
Elapsed Time -- compute elapsed time as the difference between two dates
Excel to SPSS -- reading an Excel file into SPSS SPSS to Excel -- writing SPSS data to Excel
Merging Data Files -- same cases but different variables in two files, merge them into one.
Reflecting a Variable in SPSS -- using Compute or Recode
Regression Point Displacement Design -- just an ANCOV with only one case in the treatment group.
Regression-Discontinuity Design -- a simple example, with interaction but no polynomial terms.
Save Paper -- Tips for conserving paper when printing SPSS output.
SPSS Journal -- save your syntax for later use
Standardizing a Variable -- to mean 0, sd 1
SUM and MEAN -- proper use of the SUM and MEAN functions in SAS and PASW
Truncated Output -- how to see all of the statistical output in the output viewer.
Value Labels, Data View -- toggle between viewing numeric code and value labels.
Contact Information for the Webmaster,
Dr. Karl L. Wuensch
This page most recently revised on 20. September 2009.