Part 1: SPSS Introduction

Part 1reminds you of the  two SPSS windows: the Data Editor with Data and Variable view and the Output Window recording all  data analysis results.

It is importatn to specify measurement type for each variable (nominal, ordinal and scale). To increase readability of result tables and graphs it is also imortant to include proper variable names and and data values for nominal and ordinal data.

Part 2: Data Input

Part 2 looks at data  input and how to encode different survey questions. Here we distinguish between 4 question types:  multiple choice single answer questions,  multiple choice multiple answers questions, numerical questions  and short answer questions where answers are categorised.

Rememberthe golden rule for data input: One participant - one line. And don't forget to  record  an ID for each participant! 

Part 3: Data Analysis - First Steps

Part 3 introduces you to Data analysis in SPSS using simple descriptive statistics. We look at frequency tables, simple recoding of data,  tables to describe center and variation of data , bar charts pie charts, histogramms and graph panels.  Remember, the statistics used always depend on the data type.  

W also look at correlatiions using  Scatter plots and correlation coefficents.

Part 4: More on Exploring Data

Every data analysis starts with data exploration to check your data input and to understand your data.

This 4th part of the crash course builds on part 3 (some repetition), but focusses on the explorational aspect using numbers and gaphs including box plots as a great tool to compare data distributions.

We look especially at the Explore command  to explore scale data in more detail. The Explore command also includes an option to test if  data can be considered as  normally distributed.