In this episode, we are talking about shortcuts. I am going to tell you about
five tricks for using IBM SPSS Statistics software that will make your
work simpler and quicker. These are tricks that I discovered over years of
working with SPSS. Some of them are hiding in plain sight. Many of them are
only one click of the mouse. But all of them are real time savers. We will dive
deeper as I share with you my five favorite SPSS shortcuts.
SPSS was developed to make statistical analysis easier to do, but many of the
tricks that make the analysis even easier are not taught in most statistics
courses. Let me show you some of the ways that I have discovered to make SPSS work
even better. Number 1: Total Recall - use the dialogue
recall box to save time with drop-down menus, and rapidly access your recently
used analyses. You are using the Frequency dialog box to check and clean
your data. Every time you rerun an analysis, you have to navigate to the
same drop-down dialog boxes. Speed up the process by using Dialog Recall. Every
time you use a drop-down menu, that analysis is added to the dialogue recall
list. Instead of navigating drop-down menus, you can bring up any analysis with
the click of a mouse. The first time you click this option,
there may be few or no analyses available. But as soon as you begin using
the drop-down menus, that new analysis will be available for your use.
Number 2: Quick Description - Get descriptive statistics for any variable
without using drop-down menus. Click on any variable - we will use income - and then
choose Run Descriptive Statistics. Because this is a scale variable, you get
mean, median, standard deviation, minimum, and maximum. Now try it with an ordinal
variable: income category. In addition to the previous descriptives, we also get a
frequency and percent for each category. When you use a nominal variable, like
gender, you get sample size and the frequency table. So you can see that the
type of descriptive statistics generated, are sensitive to the level of
measurement. If you hold down the Shift key, you can select a range of variables.
And the Control key allows you to select only the variables that you want.
Still not fast enough for you? Okay, here's how you can do it even more quickly.
In Data View, right-click on a variable name and then choose Descriptive Statistics.
You get exactly the same output as before. You can even do this in Variable View by
right-clicking on a variable name and choosing Descriptives.
Number 3: Switcheroo - interpret raw data more easily by
switching between variable values and variable labels. This only works in
Data View. When your data are coded as numbers, it is difficult for human beings
to interpret them. But you can easily see the levels of your variables by clicking
on the Value Labels button. You can toggle back and forth to see the value
labels. If you do not see value labels, that means that you need to set them
here in Variable View, in the values box.
Number 4: Show Me the Data. You have run your analysis and you want to export a
copy to Word. You already know that you can export output using the Export
button. Let me show you how you can get only the data that you want to see and
none that you don't. If you export your analysis to Word using the Export button,
you get the Notes table, which you may or may not want. It is easy to forget that
the Notes table will print because it is "not visible". You can skip the Notes table
when you export by choosing Objects to Export: All visible.
Now, hidden objects do not export.
Alternatively, you can remove specific parts of analyses in the viewer by
clicking on them and then pressing Delete on the keyboard. You can even
delete entire analyses that you do not want, and if you want only a specific
analysis or part of an analysis to export, right-click and choose Export.
Only that specific analysis gets exported. Number 5: Saving Labels. When you
have multiple variables that all have the same labels - such as when you are
using a survey with a Likert item response scale - you can easily create
labels once and then reuse them for other variables. You have a set of items
that all have the same response options, and you want to add those response
options as value labels, so that they will be easier to interpret, but of
course, this can take some time. Begin by creating one set of labels the way that
you want them:
This next step can be a little tricky because SPSS can be finicky. I have had
the best luck by clicking off of the value labels, and then returning using
the arrow keys on the keyboard. Use the drop down menu to choose Edit -> Copy
You can now use the down arrow on the keyboard and Command-V to paste the
variable labels to the remaining variables.
Now you know some ways to save time when using SPSS. I hope that this also
encourages you to experiment with the software and learn some new tricks for
yourself. Thanks for watching this video and be sure to subscribe to the channel
for more videos about using SPSS.