Introduction to SPSS

Learn how to analyze data using SPSS

Unravel the mysteries within data with SPSS software! SPSS is one of the most popular software packages used for statistical analysis and understanding data. Big data, prediction, and data mining all use SPSS.

Academic courses that use SPSS include psychology, education, research methods, nursing, social research, engineering management, and, naturally, statistics. SPSS appears in a wide range of applications in the business world, too, such as, automotive, pharmaceutical, medical device, outsourcing, and project management.

Data is generated from everything. Social media, educational research, hip replacement studies, Alaska Iditarod dog sled races, and automotive surveys all generate data. Although SPSS can read data in excel format, the capabilities of SPSS software eclipse those of programs like excel.

In this course, students will learn how to analyze data using the IBM SPSS software package. Using interesting datasets, this course focuses on using SPSS user-friendly menus with point-and-click. The course also includes introductions to statistics, data, and SPSS Command Syntax Language programming. No prior knowledge of statistics or programming is assumed.

Topics include:

• SPSS software download and installation guidance - license included in the first lecture
• Basic statistics: mean, median, range, standard deviation, histograms, frequency distribution
• Using SPSS: crosstabs, import, export, save, correlations, chart builder
• Data quality control, missing values, absurd values, data cleaning, formats, create new variables, file formats (xls, txt, pdf)
• Fun data! Iditarod dog sled race, 1662 wolf!, automotive, pharmaceutical, financial, environmental
• Advanced techniques: regression, correlation, ANOVA, ROC curves, nonparametric, big data, data mining
• Programming and code basics of SPSS Command Syntax Language, ASCII, hexadecimals, Braille, useful directory setup