Using SPSS to Understand Research and Data Analysis.

3.3 A Look Back and a Look Ahead

Chapters 2 and 3 were meant to get you a quick start with SPSS, to illustrate the basics of SPSS, creating a data file, and doing a simple analysis of the data in that file. The Frequencies procedure illustrated is commonly used, especially with survey research. It is an effective number cruncher for summarizing data (and is especially important with large data files). For example, the frequency distribution of the number of previous psychology courses taken by students can be useful to the instructor in understanding the variability in the psychology background of his/her students.

There are other analyses that can be generated using the Frequencies procedure (e.g., we could generate descriptive statistics, such as the mean or mode). We could also generate separate frequency tables (e.g., to compare the number of course taken by male vs. female students). We will return to the Frequencies procedure in a later chapter.

Now that you have a basic familiarity with SPSS, in the next chapter we will introduce the EZDATA file that we will be using for the remainder of the text. This file is much larger and more complex than the simple file we have been using so far.

Thus, we will devote an entire chapter to explaining the variables in this file and how to import it into SPSS. This is an important chapter to read and study, since it will be used in the remaining chapters. Spending some time now to understand the logic of the EZDATA research project and the variables included in the data file will save you time later in the interpretation of the data analyses that will be performed on this file.