SPSS

Originally “Statistical Package for the Social Sciences,” in 2009 the company (also called SPSS, which was bought by IBM in July of 2009) re-branded its collection of social science software packages as PASW (Predictive Analytics SoftWare).  This is a common package for researchers in Psychology as well as Political Science and Sociology.

It is useful for beginners because it has a graphical user interface which more clearly shows the relationships between the data elements of a data-based research project: the data, the meta-data, the data analysis, and the results (output.)

Where to get help with SPSS

You can contact Paula Lackie (x 5607, email plackie) for help.  There are also lots of online tutorials (as this is a popular package for teaching statistics):

http://www.stat.tamu.edu/spss.php
http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/seminars/default.htm

Additionally, all of the manuals come from SPSS in PDF format. 

Carleton has a site license with “maintenance” which means we are entitled to support from the SPSS company.  They actually have had excellent resources with regard to helping to decipher how SPSS can accomplish specific statistical processes, the trick (as with all integrated software support), is to know which language SPSS uses for the process you are trying to accomplish.  Try different words and phrases and be persistent.  Please contact Paula with help on how to successfully engage SPSS support.

Versions of SPSS

There are several “current” versions and they are not fully interoperable.   There are several versions because they don’t all work on the same kind of computers. 

About the versions of SPSS on campus 2009-2010:

SPSS v15 –This is the standard version on most Windows XP computers on campus.  It is not the most current version, but for most of our purposes, it is more robust than v 16 or v17.  It is the last version with truly interactive graphics and the Maps module (for visualizing your data geographically. )

SPSS v16 – This is the first version of SPSS released with completely new java based code.  None of the output files from this version are readable on any previous versions, and vice versa.  Functionally this is equivalent to a “v1.0” release. I don’t recommend it.  However, it is the first and only version which works universally on Macintosh OSX computers.

SPSS v17 – This is essentially a bug-fix of v16 but for a new syntax editor  (which is vastly improved over any previous version.)  Most people on campus never use the syntax editor.   None of the output files from this version are readable on any version of SPSS previous to v16.  To read these files anywhere else, choose “print to PDF.”

SPSS v18 is not expected to be available on campus until 2010.

SPSS v13 is a special version which may still be found around on campus as it is the last version which worked on versions prior to OSX 10.5 on machines before Macintosh switched to the Intel Chip. Files created in v13 can be read on v15 but nothing newer.  V13 is the last version which had text-based fixed-with font output.. (which is convenient when you want total control over the layout of the output when it's moved to other applications.)