A few options in SPSS to compute (transform) data, recode data, and Select cases.

Transform—Compute variable…And then you have to indicate the specific operation. Let’s assume that you want to add a constant “5”, then you name the new variable, and indicate the operation in the window to the right.

Transform—Recode into different variables. You have to indicate the “old values” (i.e., the current values) and the “new values”. You can use this option is to want to dichotomize variables (i.e., more than 11 would be “high” and 11 or less would be “low”)

Data—Select cases. And you indicate the condition to select the cases. (The “non-selected” cases will be marked with a diagonal line.)

How to obtain the following statistics in SPSS

1. Central Tendency

Mean:

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Descriptive

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Explore

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Frequencies (Stats button; i.e., not by default)

(Note: The “Explore” option also allows you to obtain the averages across different groups; e.g., levels of an independent variable or factor; the same idea applies to other statistics.)

Median:

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Explore

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Frequencies (Stats button)

Mode:

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Frequencies (Stats button)

5% Trimmed mean:

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Explore

Robust stats of central tendency:

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Explore (Stats button—M estimators)

2. Variability

Standard deviation

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Descriptive

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Explore

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Frequencies (Stats button)

Variance

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Descriptive

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Explore

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Frequencies (Stats button)

Inter-quartile range

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Explore

Range

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Explore

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Frequencies (Stats button)

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Descriptive (Options button)

3. Shape of the distribution

Skewness

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Explore

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Frequencies (Stats button)

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Descriptive (Options button)

Kurtosis

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Explore

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Frequencies (Stats button)

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Descriptive (Options button)

4. Individual Position

Percentiles:

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Explore (Stats button—click on Percentiles; there is a list of common percentiles)

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Frequencies (Stats button)

Standard scores:

Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Descriptive (click the option to save the standarized scores, just below the left-most list)

Standard scores:

5. Correlation and regression

Correlation (bivariate) for quantitative variables

Analyze-Correlate-Bivariate

Correlation (partial correlations) for quantitative variables

Analyze-Correlate-Partial

Correlation (partial correlations) for quantitative variables

Analyze-Correlate-Partial

Correlation (bivariate) for ordinal variables

Analyze-Correlate-Bivariate (Click on the Spearman coefficient)

Correlation (bivariate) for nominal variables

Analyze-Descriptive-Crosstabs (Stats button and choose phi/Cramer)

Linear Regression (both bivariate and multivariate)

Analyze-Regression-Linear

How to get the following graphs in SPSS

(of course, we can use the Graph menu…but this is not necessary in the following cases)

Bar Chart—Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Frequencies (Plots button)

Pie Chart—Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Frequencies (Plots button)

Histogram—Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Frequencies (Plots button)

(Note that “Frequencies” also presents by default a Frequency table.)

Stef-and-Leaf diagram— Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Explore

Box-and-Whiskers diagram—Analyze-Descriptive Stats-Explore