In this series - Diving Deeper into SPSS - I
often refer to the data set demo.sav.
This video is a quick explanation of
where to find this data set on your
computer, so that you can follow along
with the other videos. If you are using a
machine such as this one at our
University,
SPSS may already have a shortcut here in
the Start menu. Under Stats we see IBM
SPSS Statistics 24. You may also get to
it through the IBM SPSS Statistics
folder. But let's say that these
shortcuts are not available, or more
importantly, let's say that you want to
find and open the demo data sets. For
that, begin with any open window. Now,
drill down through the folder structures
by double clicking. Start with this
computer (This PC) -> C Drive -> Program Files -> IBM -> SPSS ->
-> Statistics -> 24 (or your version number), and
here we arrive. The actual application is
buried way down here under "Stats." You
could double-click to launch the
application from here, or even better,
create a shortcut for yourself in your
Start menu.
IBM has been kind enough to include some
demonstration data with your
installation of SPSS. You find all of
those data sets here: Samples -> English
(unless you want to see the data in
another language), and here we are. You can
see that we have quite a few
demonstration datasets available. The one
that we are going to play with is called
demo.sav. I will use this same demo
dataset in multiple videos in this
series. You can see that we have multiple
examples of the demo data. We have demo_cs_1.sav,
and demo_cs_2.sav, and this brings us to
something that you may need to know: if
you are using a student version of SPSS,
currently called "Basic Grad Pack 25", you
may have a case limit that will prevent
you from opening the full demo.sav
data set. If you cannot get demo.sav
to open, try opening demo_cs.sav instead.
Opening these native SPSS files in SPSS
is really easy: just double-click.
So now that you have the data set open,
let's go back to your other video.
You can open any SPSS file by
double-clicking, which will also open the
Output window or "Viewer". The Viewer
contains syntax called GET FILE, which is
used to open the file. Copy-and-paste the
GET FILE syntax into a new syntax window,
or add it to the top of any analysis
syntax you have already saved. SPSS will
now open your data set automatically any
time that you run that syntax. Now quit
SPSS. Any time that you open a new SPSS
session, you will see "recently used data
sets" that will provide you with a
shortcut to reopening data that you have
used recently.
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