SPSS extensions

SPSS is a versatile and powerful program for management and statistical analysis of complex data. Especially its “point and click” user interface for data preparation and statistical tests (besides the extensive options for manual coding in syntax) makes it intuitive and user-friendly for those that don’t perform data analysis on a very regular basis.

Despite its comprehensiveness, not all common analysis procedures or tests are covered in the user interface. Below are some custom dialogues that I developed for several analyses I frequently use in my outcomes research and psychometric work. The dialogs can be installed in SPSS and allow you to perform these analyses using the familiar SPSS dialog boxes.

• Calculating the area under the curve for serial measurements

• Constructing Bland-Altman agreement plots

• Determining the number of components and factors using parallel analysis

Andrew Hayes has additionally written several very useful SPSS macros including PROCESS for mediation and moderation analysis and OMEGA for computing McDonald’s omega as an alternative to Cronbach’s alpha. All these macros are available here.