If you own Microsoft Office,
you probably already use Microsoft Word for your word processing.
You probably use it for writing research, reports, typing love letters, and doing
statistics homework - which is like writing a love letter to Science.
Many people use Excel for data entry and data cleaning and SPSS is used for
statistical analysis.
So, of course, Word is used for word processing, which means presenting your
findings to your professor, or even better, for publication. In our last
lesson, we imported data from Excel in the SPSS. Now we will run a simple
analysis in SPSS and export that output to Microsoft Word.
So at this point, we have the data from our statistics students quiz scores in
SPSS ready to analyze. We will create a table with numbers and a graph. We'll
export them to Word and then do some cleaning of the output. The QuizScores
data set should now open in SPSS. As a new SPSS data set,
the dataset contains one variable called "QuizScores". In order to have some output
to export to Word, we will run a simple analysis of this variable. We will
calculate a five number summary and a histogram for these data. Begin with the
drop-down menu. Select Analyze => Descriptive Statistics => Frequencies. Move
the QuizScores variable into the Variables window. Click on Statistics.
Under Percentile Values,
select Quartiles. Under Central Tendency, select mean, median, and mode. Under
Dispersion, select standard deviation, minimum, and maximum. And now click
Continue.
Next click on Charts.
Select Histogram, and then click Show Normal Curve on Histogram.
Click Continue and now click OK. A new output viewer window will open.
Now that we have our output, we are ready to export it to Word. You have a table
with numbers and a graph. The histogram, which is a picture.
Let's look at the output a little bit. We can see that the mean is just over 24,
the median is 25, and the mode is also 25.
We know that in a normal distribution, the mean, median, and mode are the same.
So we suspect that this is probably a normal distribution. To be safe, we should
also look at the skewness and kurtosis, to ensure that they're both between
positive and negative 1. That means I need to run another analysis and get a
little more information. To do that,
let me show you another trick in SPSS. As before,
select Analyze => Descriptive Statistics =>
Frequencies. Notice that the settings from your previous analysis
have not changed.
If we click OK, we would get exactly the same output as last time.
Uncheck the box Display frequency tables.
We don't need that. Now, instead of clicking OK,
click the Paste button. A syntax window will open with the syntax, or the
computer code, that would run this analysis.
Notice this line that says "Statistics"
These are the descriptive statistics we asked for with the drop-down menus. But i
also wanted to get the skewness and kurtosis. So let's edit the syntax.
Just type the word "skewness" space "kurtosis", and that is how you write code
in SPSS. In order to run the analysis highlight the part of the code that you
want to run and click the green triangle. As before, we get output and this time it
has those additional analyses that we ask for using the syntax.
It is not important right now that you can interpret the output, but feel free
to look at it a little bit to see what is there.
Our goal is to get this output into Microsoft Word, so that we can edit it.
This is also a good way to save a usable copy of the output. If you do not have
SPSS on your home computer,
you may run your analysis at the school computer lab, then export to Word, and
take it home, so you could work on it there.
The next steps will work to export both kinds of SPSS output - both tables and
figures. First, save the output as an SPSS output file. Click right here.
Always nice to have a copy of the original output. Of course, this file can
only be opened in SPSS, and I promised to show you how to get it into Microsoft
Word.
So in the output window, you can export SPSS output directly into Microsoft Word
using the command File => Export.
Although I prefer to use this icon. That will do exactly the same thing.
You must have the output window active for this to work.
If you see the command Export to Database, then you need to click on the
output window to bring it to the front.
Make sure that type is set to Word / RTF or . doc notice that, by default, the file
will be saved to your documents folder.
I want to put this output on my desktop. I click Type and select Desktop.
I also want to change the name of the document. I click here and type "Practice
Output."
Click OK.
On my desktop,
I see "Practice Output." Double-click to open it in Word.
Now here's something else that will help. The document is in an .RTF format.
Personally, I prefer to work in the native .docx format, if I'm using
Microsoft Word.
So, I choose Save As. Select Word Document, and Save. After that, I will discard the
old version and keep the new one.
Now, we can format the output. You can format your output in any way that you
like in Word.
You can change the font size, the margins, edit the tables,
anything you like. Of course, you can cut and paste from this document into
another Word document, such as your statistics homework. Generally, as I clean
the data, I like to select all, and then single space.
I usually delete the Notes table.
It just isn't necessary. Keep the syntax, if you choose. Your instructor may
want you to submit the output so that he or she can see the syntax or the file
pathways, so leave those in place for now. This is when you can resize the figure.
This is also when I would edit the table, if I was going to use it. You can format
the table here, or in Excel. If you choose,
the most important thing to know about formatting is that SPSS does not create
output that is formatted in APA style. Before you can use this output in APA
publication, or for your statistics class, you must reformat it into an APA style
table.
I have other videos that show you how to format tables and other output in APA
style.