Using SPSS to Understand Research and Data Analysis.

Chapter 3

Point-and Click:
Conducting Analyses in the Data Editor

3.1 Running the Frequencies Procedure in the Data Editor

In Chapter 2 we created a small data file consisting of the number of psychology courses taken by five male and five female statistics students. We will continue with this example in this chapter. Recall that in Chapter 2 we:

• created this data file in the Data Editor window (example1.SAV)
• created the same file in the Syntax Editor window (example1.SPS)
• generated frequency tables, displayed in the Output Viewer window (example1.SPO).

In Chapter 2, we generated the frequencies tables using the Syntax Editor. In this chapter we will conduct the same procedure in the Data Editor using the point-and-click method. We will use the example1.SAV file we created in Chapter 2 to do this. This method requires no knowledge of SPSS syntax code (recall that SPSS writes this code in the background as you point-and-click various selections in the Data Editor window).

• 3.1a Opening an existing data file

To follow along with the example in this chapter:

• open SPSS
• reply to the "What do you want to do?" question by selecting
• Open an exisiting data source (Figure 3.1)

Then navigate to the folder containing your example1.sav file and select that file to open.

Alternatively, if you clicked Cancel in response to the start up dialog box, you can still open an existing file from the drop-down menu in the Data Editor by doing the following:

• Select File, Open, Data… from the drop-down menu (Figure 3.2)
• Navigate to where you saved the example1.sav and select that file to open.

Your example1.SAV data file should now appear in the Data Editor (Figure 3.3).

Recall that this file contains data for ten students in a statistics course, including an ID number, a code for sex (1: male; 2: female), and the number of previous psychology courses taken.

To view a video of the two ways to open an existing data file, click Play below: