Chapter One: Getting Started With IBM SPSS for Windows

Edward E. Nelson

Using Windows

The Windows start-up screen

should look something like
Figure 1-1. Several standard
desktop icons will always
appear on start up. Note the
Taskbar along the bottom,
with the Start icon at the far
left. If you're using your own
your own computer, you can
do quite a bit of customizing
of your desktop by choosing
your favorite colors and
scenes, rearranging and
adding icons, moving the
Taskbar to a different Figure 1-1
location, hiding it from view,
and so on.

Although Windows makes use of the right-button key on the mouse, we will only use the
left button for now. When we say to click on the mouse button, it will always mean the
left one. A single click will often take you where you want to go, but if one click doesn’t
do anything, try a double click. (Double clicking means to press the left mouse button
twice in rapid succession. If nothing seems to happen, you probably need to double click
more rapidly.)

Now click on the Start icon and the Start menu

will appear. Your screen should look something
like Figure 1-2. This is the basic Start menu. It
can also be customized by adding your most
often used programs to it. Without clicking
anything yet, move the mouse pointer up and
down the Start menu. As you encounter each
item, it will become highlighted. Some of the
items on the Start menu have little downward
pointing arrows on the right. If one is present,
that means there are more menus for that item.
Figure 1-2
Starting IBM SPSS for Windows

The IBM SPSS 25 icon should be on the Start menu. If you are using a computer in a
lab, it is common for the icon to be placed in a folder. If you customize your computer,
all you have to do to start IBM SPSS is to point to the IBM SPSS 25 icon on the desktop
and double click. Then wait while IBM SPSS loads.

After IBM SPSS loads, you may, depending on how IBM SPSS is set up, get a menu that
asks, “What’s new?” at the top. For this tutorial, click Close to get rid of this. Now the
screen should look like Figure 1-3.

The Taskbar is probably

visible at the bottom of the
screen. It shows an IBM
SPSS icon. You can also
click on this icon to open
IBM SPSS.

Next, observe the three

small symbols in the
uppermost right-hand
corner of the IBM SPSS
window. The one furthest
to the right, with an X in it,
is used when you want to Figure 1-3
close any program you are
using. Don’t worry if you
click on it accidentally, a dialog box will pop up asking if you want to save anything that
changed since the last time you saved your work, before it actually lets you exit the
program.

The middle of the three small symbols allows you to expand the window in which you
are working so it fills up the whole screen, or to shrink it down to a smaller size. If the
middle square shows two cascading rectangles in it, the window is already as big as it can
get—clicking on this square will reduce the window in size. Try this now. In this
shrunken window, the middle button now shows only one rectangle. Click on it to get
back to the full screen view.

The last symbol, to the left of the other two, has what looks like a minus sign on it. Click
this and watch what happens. You haven't actually closed IBM SPSS. Click on the icon
in the task bar and IBM SPSS will reappear on your screen.

Leaving IBM SPSS

We’re not ready to actually use IBM SPSS yet, so let’s close it. There are at least four
ways to do this. Move your mouse until the arrow is pointing at the word File in the
upper-left hand corner of the screen and press the left mouse button once. A menu will
appear. Move the arrow so it is pointing at the word Exit and press the left mouse button.
This should close IBM SPSS.

There is a second technique that can do the same thing. (Computers usually have more
than one way to do everything.) Go back into IBM SPSS and move your mouse until the
arrow is pointing at the word File in the upper-left corner of the screen and press the left
mouse button once, but this time, don’t release the mouse button. Hold the mouse button
down and move the mouse down until the word Exit is highlighted. Now release the
mouse button and IBM SPSS should close. This is called click and drag and is another
way to use your mouse.

The third way to close IBM SPSS is to point your mouse at the IBM SPSS icon in the
upper-left corner of the screen. The icon will be just to the left of the words Untitled:
IBM SPSS Statistics Data Editor. Move your mouse to the icon and double click on it.
This has the same effect as the first two procedures; it closes IBM SPSS.

The final and fourth way to close IBM SPSS is to point your mouse at the X in the
upper-right corner of the screen and click. IBM SPSS will close.

Now you know how to move your mouse around and how to start and close IBM SPSS.
We’ll show you more about Windows, but not much more. If you want to learn more
about Windows, there are a lot of books available. The nice thing about Windows is that
you don’t have to know much about it to use it.

Looking at Data

There are two data files to be used with this tutorial:

 GSS16A. This is a subset of the 2016 General Social Survey. The
General Social Survey is a large, national probability sample done every
two years.
 COUNTRIES. This file includes data on almost all of the world’s
countries.

You can download these data files from the web by going to IBM SPSS Statistics for
Windows 25: A Basic Tutorial. Also, if you are in a computer lab, someone may have Comment [e1]: Please add link
copied one or both of the data files onto your hard drive.

Let’s begin by starting IBM SPSS just as you did above. Your screen should look like
Figure 1-3. (If you see a box asking, “What’s new?” click on Close to close this box.)
At the very top of the screen, you will see the words IBM SPSS Statistics Data Editor.
Just below that line will be the menu bar with the following options: File, Edit, View,
Data, Transform, Analyze, Graphs, Utilities, Extensions, Window, and Help. Point
your mouse at File and press the left mouse button.
A box will open that is the File menu. Point your mouse at Open and then at Data and
click. (Also, you could have gotten to this point by clicking on the Open Data icon just
below File on the menu bar.)

This opens a larger box called the Open Data box. Here you need to tell IBM SPSS
where to find the data file to open. In the upper part of the box, you'll see Look in. Find
the folder that contains the data file and click on the file name, GSS16A, to highlight it
and then click on Open. In a few seconds, your data matrix will appear.

A data matrix is a very important concept. The rows contain the cases and the columns
contain the variables. (If you're familiar with spreadsheets, that's what this is.) Row 1 is
case 1; row 2 is case 2, and so on. The top of each column contains the variable name.
In this data set, the variable names are abbreviations like abany and abdefect.
Unfortunately, the abbreviations for the variable names don't tell you very much. We
need some way to find out what these variables are. So try this. On the menu bar at the
top of your screen, you'll see the word Utilities. Point your mouse at Utilities and click
the left button. This will open the Utilities menu. Point your mouse at Variables and
click again. Your screen should look like Figure 1-4.

You'll see a list of all the

variables in your data on the
left side of the little window.
(Also, see Appendix A for a
list of variables.) Point your
mouse at any of these variables
and click. To the right of the
Variable List you'll see a short
description of this variable.
For example, point your mouse Figure 1-4
at the variable abany and press
the left mouse button. This
question asked if respondents thought that obtaining a legal abortion should be legal for a
woman if she wants it for any reason. The possible answers are YES (value 1), NO
(value 2), DK or don't know (value 8), NA or no answer (value 9), and IAP or not
applicable (value 0). (Not applicable includes people who were not asked the question.)
As you will see, these values are very important.

Now you know how to open a preexisting data file in IBM SPSS and how to find out
what the variables are in the file. We will tell you more about this later, but here we just
want to give you a brief introduction to IBM SPSS.

A Brief Tour of IBM SPSS

Now that you have the file opened, let's look at some things you can do with IBM SPSS.
You're already familiar with the variable abany. Let's find out what percent of people
surveyed thought it ought to be legal for a woman to have an abortion for any reason. (If
you have the Variables window open showing the variable labels and
values, point your mouse at the cancel button and click it.) On the
menu bar you will see Analyze. Point your mouse at Analyze and
click it. A box opens that looks like Figure 1-5.

This lists the statistical procedures in IBM SPSS. We want to use

Descriptive Statistics so point your mouse at Descriptive
Statistics. This opens another box listing the statistical procedures
you can use to summarize your data. Point your mouse at
Frequencies and click it. This opens the Frequencies box. Since
abany is the first variable in the data, it's already highlighted.1 Point
your mouse at the right arrow next to the list of variables and click it.
The variable abany will move to the box called Variable(s). This is
how you select variables. Point your mouse at OK and click it. In a
few seconds, a new screen should appear that looks like Figure 1-6.
We are now in a different part of IBM SPSS called the Output
Window. This is where the results, or output, are displayed.

The Output Window is divided into two vertical frames or panes.

The left-hand pane contains the outline of the output or information
that IBM SPSS gives you. This information is in outline form and Figure 1-5
can be used to select what you want to view. Simply click on the
information you want to look at and that
information will appear in the right-hand
pane. You can also collapse and expand the
outline by clicking on the plus and minus
signs in the left-hand pane. The plus sign
indicates that the information is collapsed (or
hidden) and the minus sign indicates that it is
expanded (or shown). You can use the scroll
bars on each pane to scroll through the Output
Window.

On the right side, the frequency distribution

for abany is divided into four parts: (1) the
title, (2) notes on the table (there aren’t
any for this table), (3) the active dataset Figure 1-6
(i.e., the dataset you are currently using), (4) statistics (a summary of the number of
missing and valid observations), and (5) the actual table showing the frequency
distribution. Click on Statistics in the left-hand pane and you will see that there were
1,825 valid and 1,042 missing cases. Click on abortion—if woman wants for any

1
Instead of seeing a list of variables, you may see a list of variable labels. You can change this so IBM
SPSS displays the list of variables. To do this, click on Edit in the menu bar, then click on Options and on
the General tab. Look for Variable Lists in the General tab and click on Display names. You can put the
variable names in alphabetical order by clicking on Alphabetical just below Display names. Finally, click
on OK.
reason and you will see the frequency distribution. In Figure 1-6, you can see that 819
people said yes, 1,006 said no, 49 said they didn't know, 29 didn’t answer the question,
and 964 were coded not applicable. (These 964 respondents were not asked this question.
In survey research it's very common to ask some, but not all, of the respondents a
particular question. In this case, only 1,903 of the 2,867 respondents were asked this
question.) Of those who had an opinion, we want to know what percent of the
respondents said yes or no, so we should look at the Valid Percents in the table. About
45% of the respondents who had an opinion thought it should be legal, while 55%
thought it should be not be legal.

It would be interesting to know if

men or women were more likely to
favor allowing a legal abortion
when the woman wants it for any
reason. We’re going to use a
crosstab to determine this. Point
your mouse at Analyze and press
the left mouse button. Then point
your mouse at Descriptive
Statistics and finally, point your
mouse at Crosstabs and press the
mouse button. Your screen should
look like Figure 1-7. The list of Figure 1-7
variables in your data set is on the
left of the screen. We want to move the variable abany into the box next to the list of
variables where it says Rows. Click on the variable abany, which will highlight it.

Now click on the arrow pointing to the

right, which is next to the Rows box.
Notice that this moves abany into the Rows
box. We also need to move the variable
sex into the Columns box. You will have
to use the scroll bar in the box containing
the list of variables to find this variable.
(You can also click anywhere in this box
and then type the letter S to move to the
first variable starting with the letter S.)
Point your mouse at the down arrow next
to the list of variables and click. If you
keep pressing the mouse button, the list of
Figure 1-8
variables will move down and eventually you
will see the variable sex. Highlight it and click on the arrow pointing to the right, which
is next to the Columns box. This moves sex into the Columns box. You screen should
look like Figure 1-8.

Frequencies by themselves are seldom useful. You’ll need to compute percents. To get
IBM SPSS to compute percentages, point your mouse at the button labeled Cells at the
right of the screen and click on it. This will open the Crosstabs: Cell Display box.
Find the box called Column Percentages and click on this box.

Now click on Continue and you will

be back to the Crosstabs box. To tell
IBM SPSS to run the Crosstabs
procedure, click on OK. In a second
your screen should look like Figure
1-9. Use the scroll bar to look at all
the information that IBM SPSS gives
you in the Output Window. Figure
1-9 shows the results, or “output.” It
shows, for example, that males and
females differ very little in their
opinions about a woman obtaining a
legal abortion for any reason. Forty-
five percent of the males and 44
percent of the females approve of a Figure 1-9
woman obtaining an abortion for any reason.

You can also examine other items in the

survey to compare men and women.
Who has more education? Is the average
age at birth of first child younger for
women than for men? Comparing means
will answer these questions. Click on
Analyze, point your mouse to Compare
Means, and then click on Means. Your
screen should look like Figure 1-10.
Figure 1-10
Now put age at birth of first child
(agekdbrn) and years of school completed
(educ) in the Dependent List box and sex
in the Independent List box. By now you
have a good idea how to do this.
Highlight agekdbrn in the list of variables
on the left of the screen by pointing your
mouse at it and clicking. Then click on
the arrow next to the Dependent List box.
Do the same for educ. Now highlight sex
and click on the arrow next to the Figure 1-11
Independent List box. This should move
agekdbrn and educ into the Dependent List box and sex into the Independent List box and
your screen should look like Figure 1-11. Then click on OK and the output should look
like Figure 1-12.
Women had their first child at an average age of 23.45
years, while the average for men is 25.84 years, a
difference of a little more than two years. Now look at
the mean years of school completed for men and women.
There’s virtually no difference (about 0.11 of a year)
between men and women.

Another way of examining relationships is to look at

Pearson Correlation Coefficients. One might hypothesize
that respondents’ education is correlated with the
educational achievements of their parents. The Figure 1-12
Pearson Correlation Coefficient will tell us the
strength of the linear relationship between
father’s education, mother’s education, and the
respondent’s education. The closer the
correlation is to 1, the stronger the linear
relationship, and the closer it is to 0, the weaker
the linear relationship.

Point your mouse at Analyze and press the

mouse button. Now point your mouse at
Correlate and then click on Bivariate. Your
screen should look like Figure 1-13.

Now move the following three variables into the Figure 1-13
Variables box: educ, maeduc, and paeduc. These
variables refer to the number of years of school
completed by the respondent and the respondent’s
parents. Highlight each of these variables and
click the arrow next to the Variables box. The
screen should look like Figure 1-14. Click on OK
and the correlations will appear in your Output
box.

The strongest correlation is between father’s and

mother’s education. As we predicted, there is also
a strong correlation between respondent’s
education and parent’s education. Figure 1-14

Overview of Chapters

Chapter 2 will acquaint you with how to enter new data into IBM SPSS using the Data
Editor. Chapter 3 explains how to take your data, or preexisting data, and modify it in a
way that makes it easier to understand. Chapter 4 starts the sections where you really get
to see the results of your work. In Chapter 4 you will learn how to look at each variable,
one at a time. We call this univariate analysis. Chapters 5 through 7 will show you how
to look at two variables at a time, or what we call bivariate analysis. Chapter 5 will show
you how to create a cross tabulation. Chapter 6 shows you alternative ways of comparing
two variables and Chapter 7 will show you how to do this using linear regression
techniques. Chapter 8 shows you how to explore relationships among sets of variables
using multivariate cross tabulation and multiple regression. This is called multivariate
analysis. Finally, Chapter 9 will show you how to present your data effectively and will
include charts and tables.