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Introduction To SPSS Lecture And Assignment

Please answer all of the following questions embedded in this assignment and hand it in as a PDF document, and then attend to the discussion question component. Follow all of this very carefully, I have outlined it specifically for you and you just need to use your book.

Hi Folks - now that you've read the first few chapters of your SPSS textbook, you have a general idea of what's in store for you over the next few weeks, as we spend a fair bit of our time both learning about some of the basics of research and how to best utilize the tool that is SPSS. First I want you to get comfortable with some basic data analysis in SPSS, before you even have to input any data (don't worry, that’s coming also). The basic structure of SPSS is a cell-based worksheet that you interact with by entering data and then utilizing the data you have entered by running various statistical tests on it. Don’t worry, you don’t actually have to know how to do statistics in order to run through the SPSS work that is required in this course. However, it won’t hurt. So the basics of this process are in the main screen, where you look at or enter data, and the other part of the main screen, where you actually create the form that the data gets put into. The best way to think about this is as a glass of water. If you hold up a pitcher of water over the counter and pour it there without the glass, the water is just going to splash all over the place and make a big mess, and you wont be able to utilize any of it. So first we have to make a glass to catch all of the data. For example, when you first open SPSS, it just looks like a giant bunch of cells that are empty and have no meaning. That’s because there’s a giant bunch of cells and they have no meaning! Think of what you would need to do to actually put your questionnaire, the one you’re still working on, in SPSS. First you would need to be able to tell the computer what all your questions are, and then you would need to be able to tell it what answers you want people to be able to use. This is what’s at the heart of the small little tabs in the left-hand corner of your screen, labeled “Data View” and “Variable View”. When you first open SPSS, and click on each of these tabs, they are both empty! Unless you’re opening a data file that already has something entered into it. But initially you will have nothing until I give you a data file or you begin collecting data on your own. We will be doing both. For example, I am giving you a data file in this assignment called GSSNET. It is attached to this assignment and you need to download it to your desktop (or somewhere) to be able to work with it. In this data file, if you open it with SPSS (the only thing you can open it with right now), you’re going to see a bunch of cells full of information! If you click on the variable view tab, you’re going to see, essentially, all of the questions that were asked by participants in the GSS, which stands for General Social Survey, and all of the possible answer to these questions. More on this later. If you go to data view (click on the bottom left-hand tab that says data view), you’re going to see all of the data that was actually collected by people. So if you click back and forth between data view and variable view, you’re going to see, alternately, either the questions that were asked of people (that’s the glass I described earlier), or you’re going to see the data collected from people (that’s the water I described earlier). Of course, this is all elaborated on more fully in your text, but I like to explain this in my own words for the beginning of our work together with SPSS, because it’s so foreign to most of you and really isn’t something you have dealt with before. So, the first thing to do here, then, is to actually open up SPSS (you should have it by now), and let it start on your computer. There will be slight differences between the PC and Mac versions, but not major. Then, once it’s open, use the file command and open up the GSSNET file that I have made available to you. You can’t really do anything until you have mastered this part, because you have to get used to opening and saving and closing files with SPSS, and it takes some time. But once you have that GSSNET file open (it will have the extension “.SAV”, so it will read GSSNET.SAV), you will see a bunch of data laid out in front of you. This, my friends, is where the fun begins (sort of).

First off, get comfortable tabbing back and forth between data view and variable view. Make sure you understand that the variable view is where the questions and their attendant answers are kept, as well as the general parameters of the questionnaire. And then in the data view, that’s where the questions are actually answered by the respondents of the questionnaire. For example, go to the data view and look at the left hand side and you’ll see a bunch of numbers going down, and if you scroll down you’ll see the numbers continue. Keep scrolling down and each number corresponds to a row of answers in a questionnaire.

1. How many subjects are in the GSSNET database?

Go to the variable view and look at the left-hand side and you’ll also see a bunch of numbers going down, and you can scroll all the way down to the end. This number will be much smaller than the number in the data view, because it’s the number of questions rather than the number of subjects.

2. How many questions are in the GSSNET database questionnaire?

Remember, tab back and forth between data view and variable view. Data is where the subjects are and variable is where the questions are.

Now, I have another challenge for you. I have also attached to this assignment a file entitled LIBRARY.SAV. This is a different SPSS database that asked people about their habits around library use. Same deal here – this file is attached to the assignment, download it to your desktop, and open up the file within the SPSS program. It’s going to look awfully similar to the GSSNET database, because it’s a bunch of questions and a bunch of numbers in a giant sheet of cells that may look blinding and overwhelming at first. But start back at the basics, and remember to tab back and forth between data view and variable view. In the variable view is where all of the questions from the questionnaire are located. That’s why it’s called the variable view, because each question in the questionnaire is considered a variable. Now look down the left-hand side of the variable view and you will also see a bunch of numbers scrolling down. Go all the way down, and consider that each numbered row equates to a single question on the questionnaire.

3. How many questions are in the LIBRARY database questionnaire?

Tab back over to the data view sheet in the LIBRARY database, and again look down the left-hand side, and start scrolling down until you get to the last numbered row. Keep in mind that each of the numbered rows represents a person who answered the questions in the questionnaire.

4. How many people are contained within the LIBRARY database in total?

So now you have an idea of how to navigate a little bit around in already-completed databases. So remember, in the GSSNET and LIBRARY databases, someone(s) made up a bunch of questions and then got permission to hand them out to a bunch of people. In this way, they received a lot of paperwork back from people and had to then code and enter the questionnaires into the databases. You’re going to get that opportunity soon also. So this database is basically just a bunch of questions that people answer, or observations that people make about rats (how long did they take to get through the maze to the cheese?), or whether or not human subjects were able to answer questions about their drug use habits, or anything else you can imagine. So what is SPSS used for? Collecting, analyzing, and representing data in a way that helps us to say something about it.

5. Please describe your interpretation of what SPSS is, what it is used for, and how you imagine you might be utilizing it in this course.

6. Tell me what the variable view is for and what the data view is for. Explain fully.

So what are we going to do with these databases? We are going to analyze some data! First we’re going to start with something called a frequency count. What is this? Well, hold up your right hand and count your fingers.

7. How many fingers do you have?

There, now you have completed a frequency count. That’s all it is. Except, when the numbers are large, as in the size of these databases, we like to let the computer do the frequency counting for us. So once you have the GSSNET database open again, we’re going to do a frequency count. To do this, you simply go to the menu up top labelled “Analyze”, then you go to the sub-menu called “Descriptive Statistics”, then you go to the sub-sub-menu of “Frequencies”. This is going to pop up a box that is essentially asking you “which of the questions do you want to compute a frequency count for?” You do this by moving all of the variables from the left box, to the right box!. You can hit ctrl-A for select all, then simply click the arrow and move everything over. This is the first step. Then you will notice there is a button there called Statistics. Click this button and then choose Mean, Median, and Mode with the checkboxes.

8. What are the definitions of Mean, Median, and Mode?

Also make sure that the box in the lower left-hand corner that says “Display Frequency Tables” is checked. Without it, you get nothing. We don’t want nothing! Finally, click ok. Boom! You’ve done a Frequency count. So what happens next? Well, You get a few seconds of waiting, and then a whol enew window pop up. This window is very important and you have to learn very much about how important this window is to the entire SPSS experience. The window that pops up is called the Output Window, and a lot of your work is actually going to take place within the Output Window. In fact, the Output Window is a whole mini program unto itself, and even has a whole different file extension as a save format, called an .SPV file. So if you save to a default, it will be called “Output1.SPV”. It is ivery important to understand the difference between a .SAV file and an .SPV file. The .SAV file is all of the data that you or someone has collected with a lot of time and energy, and have spent a fair amount of time setting up. You’ll learn more about that with your own questionnaire. The .SAV file is super-important because you can’t do anything without it, and it’s icon is usually mostly red on the desktop. The .SPV file, on the other hand, also known as the output file, is where, once you complete all the statistical operations upon your data, it all winds up getting deposited. These are your results. This is where you are going to do all of the work interpreting and working through numbers to understand what this data actually means, where you’ll be manipulating charts and working with information to get a greater understanding of the basics of data analysis. It’s a lot, I know, but you’ll also get used to it.