Basic & Descriptive Statistics (Free Access)
Basics
- Two tabs are present at the bottom left corner of the SPSS interface
- Data view and Variable view
- The data view is the place to put in the scores of all variables, however before inserting the scores, the variables need to be defined.
- The variable view is the tab were the variable name, type, measure, label and other aspects of the variables are defined, after which data can be inserted through the data view tab.
- Variable view columns and their meaning
- Name- the operational name of the variable (not space permitted between words)
- Type:
- Numeric for variables with numbers
- String data- for alphabets (not all string variables can be tested keep all data used for analysis as numeric)
- Width-number of digits before the decimal
- Label- Name of the variable to appear on the final table.
- Data view works similarly to excel where under each variable, the assigned scores can be directly fed.
- Once the data view has all the scores for all variables, analysis can begin.
Descriptive Statistics
To find out any descriptive statistics which includes:
- Mean,
- Median,
- Mode,
- SD,
- Variance,
- Skewness,
- Kurtosis,
- Range,
- Quartiles,
- Sum
The following steps are to be followed:
- Click on Analyze
- Descriptive statistics
- Frequencies
- Move the variable of your choice to the variables tab
- Click on statistics
- Select the required tests
- Click on continue
- Ok



- The output file will have all the scores.
- Interpretation is not based on pre-existing rules, therefore, can be understood with reference to the range of scores
Next Chapter: Inferential Statistics