SPSS 16.0 Brief Guide

The SPSS 16.0 Brief Guide provides a set of tutorials to acquaint you with the components of the SPSS system. Topics include reading data, using the Data Editor, examining summary statistics for individual variables, working with output, creating and editing charts, working with syntax, modifying data values, sorting and selecting data, and performing additional statistical procedures.

SPSS 13.0

SPSS 13.0 is a comprehensive system for analyzing data. SPSS can take data from almost any type of file and use them to generate tabulated reports, charts and plots of distributions and trends, descriptive statistics, and complex statistical analyses.

This manual, the SPSS® Base 13.0 User's Guide, documents the graphical user interface of SPSS for Windows. Examples using the statistical procedures found in SPSS Base 13.0 are provided in the Help system, installed with the software. Algorithms used in the statistical procedures are available on the product CD-ROM.

In addition, beneath the menus and dialog boxes, SPSS uses a command language. Some extended features of the system can be accessed only via command syntax. (Those features are not available in the Student Version.) Complete command syntax is documented in the SPSS 13.0 Command Syntax Reference, available on the Help menu.

SPSS Options

The following options are available as add-on enhancements to the full (not Student Version) SPSS Base system:

SPSS Regression Models™ provides techniques for analyzing data that do not fit traditional linear statistical models. It includes procedures for probit analysis, logistic regression, weight estimation, two-stage least-squares regression, and general nonlinear regression.

SPSS Advanced Models™ focuses on techniques often used in sophisticated experimental and biomedical research. It includes procedures for general linear models (GLM), linear mixed models, variance components analysis, loglinear analysis, ordinal regression, actuarial life tables, Kaplan-Meier survival analysis, and basic and extended Cox regression.

SPSS Tables™ creates a variety of presentation-quality tabular reports, including complex stub-and-banner tables and displays of multiple response data.

SPSS Trends™ performs comprehensive forecasting and time series analyses with multiple curve-fitting models, smoothing models, and methods for estimating autoregressive functions.

SPSS Categories® performs optimal scaling procedures, including correspondence analysis.

SPSS Conjoint™ performs conjoint analysis.

SPSS Exact Tests™ calculates exact p values for statistical tests when small or very unevenly distributed samples could make the usual tests inaccurate.

SPSS Missing Value Analysis™ describes patterns of missing data, estimates means and other statistics, and imputes values for missing observations.

SPSS Maps™ turns your geographically distributed data into high-quality maps with symbols, colors, bar charts, pie charts, and combinations of themes to present not only what is happening but where it is happening.

SPSS Complex Samples™ allows survey, market, health, and public opinion researchers, as well as social scientists who use sample survey methodology, to incorporate their complex sample designs into data analysis.

SPSS Classification Trees™ creates a tree-based classification model. It classifies cases into groups or predicts values of a dependent (target) variable based on values of independent (predictor) variables. The procedure provides validation tools for exploratory and confirmatory classification analysis.

The SPSS family of products also includes applications for data entry, text analysis, classification, neural networks, and flowcharting.

About This Manual

This manual documents the graphical user interface for the procedures included in the Base system. Illustrations of dialog boxes are taken from SPSS for Windows. Dialog boxes in other operating systems are similar. Detailed information about the command syntax for features in this module is provided in the SPSS Command Syntax Reference, available from the Help menu.