Texto de apoio para utilizacao do spss

Quick Overview of SPSS
Jennifer Slawinski Blessing

THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND WITH SPSS: o Variable names o Variable names are limited to 8 characters and can’t handle “oddball” characters. You can very easily put longer labels on the variables that will be used on the printout when you run an analysis. But you need to make sure that the 8 characters are meaningful enough to eyeball. (This is important if you import data from Excel and have a header row of variable names – it will truncate or delete variable names that are too long.) o File names o Data files are given an “.sav” extension. Output files are given an “.spo” extension. If you click on an output file to launch SPSS – it will open an empty data file along with it. Whenever SPSS is launched – it has a data file open (new/blank or a created one). o Files are easily cross compatible with Windows and Mac. o One of the features that is really handy is that it can open your Excel files into a data sheet. You do need to tell SPSS you’re looking for a data file with an “.xls” extension – and then it’s easy for the computer to “find” it. o Open files o You can only have one data file open at a time. However, you can have multiple output files open at the same time. You need to pay attention to which output file is “active” – as that is the one it will dump new analyses to. You can easily switch this by clicking in the file you want to use – but you need to make sure you know where things are going. I often have different output files open, as I like to put the descriptive info in one file and then organize analyses by type. I find that keeps the output files smaller and easier to handle. o Output files o One feature I really like is that you can export your output file to an html file. I’ve found this to be really handy in classes like research methods. It made it easier to get output files to everyone via the class