Using SPSS to Understand Research and Data Analysis.

2.3 The Second Step: Creating and Saving a Data File in the Data Editor

Now that we have accessed SPSS for Windows, we need to have a data file to analyze. SPSS recognizes and is able to import files created in other applications (e.g., Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, and Windows Notepad). We will not describe importing files from other applications - instead, we want to get you started by creating a data file from scratch.

Doing this will familiarize you with the main components of SPSS for creating data files, analyzing the data and viewing the results of those analyses. These three components consist of three types of windows:

• Data Editor Window
• Syntax Editor Window
• Output Viewer Window

In this section, we will discuss the first two windows, which are used to create data files (we'll discuss the Output Viewer window later). By learning how to create data files from scratch in the Data Editor and Syntax Editor windows, you will also come to understand how data is organized into a file. Files that can be imported into SPSS from other applications would be imported into either the Data or Syntax editors anyway, so working directly with these editors to create a file will help you understand any files that you would import from other applications.

Data files are created in SPSS by directly typing data into one of these two editors. The Data Editor works similar to a spreadsheet application, while the Syntax Editor works like a basic word processing application.

In the following we will describe the process of creating a data file in each of these editors. However, note that in subsequent chapters, we will work only with the Data Editor, since this is the primary window users of SPSS employ for data analysis. Use of the Syntax Editor for data analysis requires somewhat more advanced skills, so we will only refer to it occasionally in subsequent chapters. There is value in learning about this editor and how files are created with it, however, so we will address that in this section.

• 2.3a Data File Organization

The Data Editor Window that appears by default when SPSS is opended looks similar to and works like other spreadsheet applications such as Microsoft Excel. Data files are created by entering data into the cells of the table. To do this, simply click on a cell and type the appropriate numbers representing scores on variables to be analyzed. We will illustrate this process in the following.

Let’s assume that a statistics professor is interested in the number of psychology courses that students have taken prior to enrolling in his/her course. S/he is also interested in comparing the number of previous psychology courses taken by male and female students. Table 2.1 consists of data, or scores, for the number of psychology courses taken by ten students, five men and five women.

Note that there are three “variables” in this table: a student ID number (from 01 to 10), a code indicating the student’s sex (where 1 = male and 2 = female), and the number of psychology courses each student has taken (ranging from 1 to 4).

Thus, the data is organized with the three variables (ID, Sex, Courses) listed in columns, and the scores for each of the ten students on each of these three variables entered in the rows. You will see that the data needs to be organized in this same way in SPSS. If you haven’t done so already, open SPSS now so you can follow along with this example.