SPSS allows the variable names to have a maximum of 8 characters: if they are more than 8 characters, SPSS will truncate them. To import data into SPSS, go to the file menu > import data > choose the type of file you want to import e.g ExcelĪ dialogue box will open prompting you to locate the file, then click open:Īfter clicking “open”, another box will open with various checkboxes as shown below:Ĭheck the first checkbox to import the variable names from Excel to SPSS and then click OK. Importing data from other filesīesides manual entry of data in SPSS, one can also import data if the data is in other files or format, for instance, Microsoft Excel, STATA, SAS, etc. Numbering the questionnaires also helps in case you want to check whether the data was entered correctly (quality control/checks). It is important to number the questionnaires because each questionnaire will be entered on a separate row in the data view: questionnaire 1 will be entered in row 1, questionnaire 2 will be entered in row 2 etc. The variable “age” will also appear in the data view as the first item on the first column, as shown in the second image below:Īfter the codebook for all the variables has been completed, then you can enter the data in the questionnaires using the data view. The details for the first variable, age, will appear in the variable view as shown in the first image below. The type of measurement of a variable will influence the type of statistical analysis that can be performed on it. For the age variable, the measurement would be scale. It therefore has only three options for the measurement, that is, scale, ordinal and nominal. SPSS treats the ratio and interval variables as scale measurement. Most importantly, specify the type of measurement for the variable.Next, specify the alignment of the data e.g right, left or centre alignment.Specify how you want the missing values to be treated.This is used when we have a nominal or ordinal variable whose value labels need to be specified e.g for gender one can have male=1, female=2. For example, for the age variable, the label can be “age of respondents in years”. This provides a description of the variable name. Enter the number of decimal places you would like the data to take.Next, specify the type of variable e.g numeric.Start by specifying the name of the first variable e.g age.Open the SPSS and go to data editor, click on variable view.The best way to enter data manually in SPSS is to first create the codebook using the variable view of the data editor suing the steps below: There are two ways of entering data in SPSS: manual entry and importing from other file types. The images below show the output window when no action has been taken in SPSS and when data has been entered into SPSS. The output window shows all the output of actions taken and the analyses done in SPSS. The images below show SPSS data view and variable view when there is data: The images below show SPSS data view and variable view when there is no data: The variable view shows the properties of the data that has been entered e.g the name of the variables, the type of variables, labels used in the variables if applicable, and the measures used for the variables. The columns in the data view represent the variables while the rows in the data view represent the observations/individuals in the dataset. The data view is used to view the data that has been entered. The data editor has two views: the data view and the variable view. When you open SPSS, two windows will open: SPSS data editor In this post, I introduce SPSS, its interface, and demonstrate how to enter data in SPSS. It is one of the commonly used softwares used for statistical analyses. SPSS stands for Statistical Package for Social Sciences.
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