SPSS for beginners, a short course about how novices can use SPSS to analyze their research findings. With this tutorial anyone becomes able to use SPSS for basic statistical analysis. No need to be a professional to use SPSS.

1. Introduction to the
SPSS Interface
Dr. Mohammed Alahmed
Ph.D. in Biostatistics
alahmed@ksu.edu.sa
(011) 4674108
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2. Contents
• SPSS interface:
– Data view and Variable view
• How to enter data in SPSS
• How to import external data into SPSS
• How to clean and edit data
• How to get descriptive statistics
2

3. SPSS interface
• Data view
– The place to enter data
– Columns: variables
– Rows: records
• Variable view
– The place to enter variables
– List of all variables
– Characteristics of all variables
3

4. 4
Enter data in SPSS directly

5. Example: Hospital-stay data
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6. 6
Columns:
variables
Rows:
cases
Under Data
View

7. Enter Variables
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1. Click this
Window
1. Click Variable View
2. Type variable name
under Name column
(AGE).
NOTE: Variable name
can be 64 bytes long,
and the first
character must be a
letter or one of the
characters @, #, or
$.
3. Type: Numeric,
string, etc.
4. Label: description of
variables.
1. Click Variable View
2. Type variable name
under Name column
(AGE).
NOTE: Variable name
can be 64 bytes long,
and the first
character must be a
letter or one of the
characters @, #, or
$.
3. Type: Numeric,
string, etc.
4. Label: description of
variables.
2. Type
variable
name
3. Type:
numeric or
string
4.
Description
of variable

8. Enter variables
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Based on your code
book!

9. Enter cases
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10. Import data from Excel
• Select File Open Data
• Choose Excel as file type
• Select the file you want to import
• Then click Open
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11. Open Excel files in SPSS
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12. Continue
12
Save
this file
as
SPSS
data

13. Clean data after import data files
• Run cases summaries for all variables
• Run frequency for qualitative variables
and Descriptives for quantitative
variables
• Check outputs to see if you have variables
with wrong values.
• Check missing values and physical surveys
if you use paper surveys, and make sure
they are real missing.
• Sometimes, you need to recode string
variables into numeric variables 13

14. cases summaries
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15. 15

16. 16

17. Basic Statistical Analysis
• Descriptive statistics:
1. Find wrong entries
2. Have basic knowledge about the
sample and targeted variables in a
study
3. Summarize data.
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18. 18
Analyze Descriptive statistics Frequency
Qualitative Variables

19. 19

20. 20

21. 21
Analyze Descriptive statistics Descriptives
Quantitative Variables

22. 22
Histogram Box-Plot
AGE

23. 23
Duration of Stay
Histogram Box-Plot