Linked here are 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 SPSS.

Dr. Karl L. Wuensch
Department of Psychology
East Carolina University

Introductory Lessons

• Installing SPSS on a Mac at ECU

• Using SPSS on ECU's Virtual Computer Lab

• An Introduction to SPSS for Windows -- booting SPSS, entering data, basic descriptive statistics including schematic plots, saving data and output.

• Exporting SPSS Output to Word

  • Changing to Landscape Mode

• NoNotes -- suppress the production of those annoying NOTES tables in exported output.

• Grouped Frequency Distribution -- how to create one

• Using SPSS to Explore the IntroQuest Data File -- importing data from an Excel file, assigning value labels, contingency tables and Pearson Chi-Square, bivariate linear correlation.

  • Read Plain Text Files into SPSS

  • Read Plain Text Beware -- with LIST (delimited) input, adjacent delimiters cause problems

• Using SPSS to Screen Data -- finding out-of-range data, outliers, and violations of normality assumptions and transforming to reduce skewness.

  • Simple Data Screening -- Identifying outliers in the IntroQuest data

• 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.

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.

• Rounded p values in SPSS -- and how to get them more precisely.

• 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.

• Comparing Column Proportions

Linear Correlation/Regression

• Correlation Analysis -- brief introduction -- correlations between intelligence, income, and voting behavior; also overall GPA and final grade in stats class

  • Correlation between homework grades and exam grades

  • Correlates of infant mortality in African nations

• Correlation and Regression Analysis -- linear, bivariate and trivariate

• Producing and Interpreting Residuals Plots

• ScatterPlots, Interactive

Two Sample Tests

• T Tests and Related Statistics: SPSS -- one sample, correlated, and independent samples t tests, point biserial r, split file, confidence interval for Cohen's d, Mann-Whitney U, Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test.

• Binomial Sign Test

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

• One-Way Repeated Measures ANOVA on Ranks

• Two-Way Independent Samples ANOVA with SPSS -- including tests of simple main effects.

• Three-Way Independent Samples ANOVA with SPSS -- including tests of simple effects.

• One-Way Within-Subjects ANOVA with SPSS -- multivariate and traditional tests.

• 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

• Bar Charts, Clustered

• Bootstrapped Confidence Intervals for Mean and Median

• Copying Wide Tables Into MS Word

• Correlation Matrix Input to SPSS

• Correlation Matrix, Output to File

• 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.

• Deleting Cases With Missing Data

• 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

• Intercept -- Do not use a variable name that starts out with "Intercep."

• Merging Data Files -- same cases but different variables in two files, merge them into one.

• Nonparametric Tests

• Moving a Variable -- you can quickly move it from any location to the top of the file.

• 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.

• Standardizing a Variable -- to mean 0, sd 1

• Syntax in Output

• Transforming to Reduce Positive Skewness

• SUM and MEAN -- proper use of the SUM and MEAN functions in SAS and SPSS

• Syntax  -- display it in the output, record it in a journal, etc.

• Text Data in SPSS -- Unicode versus Locale

• 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.

• Visit Karl's Index Page
• SPSS Homework Assignments for PSYC 2101
• Letters From Former Students -- some continue to use my online lessons when they go on to doctoral programs

 
Contact Information for the Webmaster,
Dr. Karl L. Wuensch

This page most recently revised on 16-April-2022.