Introduction to SPSS

BeginnersPrerequisitesUpdated

This module is part of the Social Science Research Methods Centre training programme which is a shared platform for providing research students with a broad range of quantitative and qualitative research methods skills that are relevant across the social sciences.

Students are taught how to open, enter and manage data in SPSS, and how to handle output produced by SPSS. The module will describe how to execute some statistical analyses in SPSS.

• Mphil and PhD students from participating departments taking the Social Science Research Methods Centre training programme as part of their research degree
• Students with little or no knowledge of SPSS

• You must have a University Information Services (Computing) Desktop Services password (http://www.ucs.cam.ac.uk/linkpages/newcomers)
• You must have enrolled for the module's Moodle course page (instructions: http://www.ssrmc.group.cam.ac.uk/ssrmc-modules/moodle)

Number of sessions: 1

• What is SPSS?
• SPSS syntax
• Creating variables
• Entering data
• Data handling
• Basic statistical tests using SPSS
• Understanding SPSS output

To introduce students to one of the most frequently used statistics packages for social sciences, SPSS and review basic statistical concepts and introduce basic analyses with SPSS.

Presentations, demonstrations and practicals

SPSS on MCS

• Andy Field, Discovering Statistics Using IBM SPSS, 4th Ed. 2013 (Sage: London), or any earlier editions.

No preparation reading required.

• To gain maximum benefits from the course it is important that students do not see this course in isolation from the other MPhil courses or research training they are taking.
• Responsibility lies with each student to consider the potential for their own research using methods common in fields of the social sciences that may seem remote. Ideally this task will be facilitated by integration of the SSRMC with discipline-specific courses in their departments and through reading and discussion.

One session of 3 hours