How to Use SPSS Syntax: An Overview of Common Commands

Manfred te Grotenhuis (PhD, Sociology, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands) is an associate professor of quantitative data analysis at Radboud University Nijmegen and an affiliate of the Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS). He does research and teaching in inferential statistics, age-period-cohort models, multilevel modeling, event history analysis, and SPSS syntax. Grotenhuis has published extensively in a wide variety of journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Demography, and the International Journal of Epidemiology. He has been teaching statistics to students at Radboud University Nijmegen since 1995 and has written several introductory books on SPSS and statistics. Grotenhuis is the recipient of his university′s biennial teaching award.

Chris Visscher (MSc in Sociology, Radboud University Nijmegen,The Netherlands) has been a principal lecturer on statistics for more than 30 years. He wrote one of the early SPSS syntax manuals for students in 1986. He loves to sing Gregorian chants, in his office, in churches, and occasionally at students’ house parties around 3 a.m.