Getting Started with SPSS

While the Descriptives procedure is suited to describe data with an underlying continuous distribution, the Frequencies procedure is useful for summarizing both categorical and continuous data.

For categorical data, the most typical summary measure is the number or percentage of cases in each category. The mode is the category with the greatest number of cases. For ordinal data, the median (the value at which half of the cases fall above and below) may also be a useful summary measure if there is a large number of categories.

1. 1. From the menu, choose Analyze > Descriptive Statistics > Frequencies. The “frequencies” dialog box will appear.

1. 2. Select one or more categorical variables and move them into the Variable(s) list.
   3. Optionally, you can:
      • Click Statistics to select appropriate descriptive statistics.

1. 1. • Click Charts to choose to display the results with a bar chart or pie chart.

1. 3. • Click Format to specify how to display the results.
      • Click Style to specify conditionally formatting.
   4. Click OK to run the procedure.

The frequency tables and charts are displayed in the Output Viewer window.

There are many summary measures available for continuous variables, including:

Measures of central tendency. The most common measures of central tendency are the mean (arithmetic average) and median (value at which half the cases fall above and below).

Measures of dispersion. Statistics that measure the amount of variation or spread in the data include the standard deviation, minimum, and maximum.

1. From the menu, choose Analyze > Descriptive Statistics > Frequencies. The “frequencies” dialog box will appear.
2. Select one or more scale variables and move them into the Variable(s) list
3. Deselect Display frequency tables. (Frequency tables are usually not useful for scale variables since there may be almost as many distinct values as there are cases in the data file)

4. Optionally, you can:

• Click Statistics to select appropriate descriptive statistics.

• Click Charts to choose to display the results in histograms and with normal curve

5. Click OK to run the procedure.

The frequencies statistics table and the histogram are displayed in the Output Viewer window.