Researches are indispensable and critical for human progress. To investigate research questions, it is mandatory to employ the reliable statistical tool to obtain precise research findings and make a significant contribution to the research field. 

With the advancement of technology, a number of data analysis tools have evolved and are easily available in the market, and one such tool is SPSS. 

Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) is one of the most powerful yet commonly used tools used for data structuring, manipulation and analysis process. It is capable of conducting and generating results for any type of data available in social science, natural science and in the business world. 

A glimpse at structuring and performing data analysis using SPSS

The way the data is laid on the SPSS depends on the type of data gathered and the purpose of study. The steps included in structuring the data in SPSS are:

Include each value in a separate row 

Categorize the variables and ascribe a text variable using ‘variables labels’ option

Upon entering & structuring the data, the next step is performing data analysis. The steps involved here are:

Go to analyze option

Select the type of statistics (descriptive or inferential) & set frequencies

List the variables entered (mentioned in the data) in the dialogue box appearing on the left side of the window. Choose the variables for which you want to find the mean, mode, etc. and drop them in the right box

Click on the statistics button and choose the check box for mode, median, etc.

In the frequencies dialogue box, choose the type of chart to present your data

It is very important that we save our data and output in case of all the research. It's often safe to save your files to avoid data loss. 

There are various ways by which we can save and open our data in SPSS. 

Have a look at one of the popular data saving methods.

Saving SPSS data and output generated

Its is important to understand how to save your data in SPSS to carry out your study and analysis properly with ease. SPSS is easy to use for all statistical analysis. When we save our data either data view or variable view screen, both screens are saved together. 

In order to save these screens follow simple steps:

Click File on the main menu, and then click on the Save As. the dialogue box will open titled” save data as”. SPSS default folder titled “documents” will appear where all the files will be saved. Type the name of the file with which you want to save for work “ File name”.

Then click on Save. 

Note: If we have some analysis or graph related in the data view screen, then this output will be displayed in “output SPSS statistics Viewer” which is above the data view screen.

Opening the saved file

Opening your existing file in SPSS is quite simple and easy. To open the file from the main menu, follow the following steps:-

Click File, then click on Open and then select data 

Then click the file name we wish to open

Click open. If this is not the location of your file. Then search in the Look in box and scroll down for selecting the file

Click the file name, it will appear in the File name box 

Click open

Similarly, open the output file 

Click on open

Click on file, the folder data titled “documents” will appear in the “look in” box 

Click on output

Click on the file name to be opened.

Click open 

Copying and transferring the data to other source

Added advantage of SPSS is we can transfer data from SPSS to other applications such as Excel, Word etc, similarly from other software to SPSS. To explain the process, let's consider an example: take a file, SUVEY1_IMPT.

Start SPSS

Open and locate SUVEY1_IMPT

Open the file in excel

In SPSS, click on the first cell below pts_exam1 and drag down to select all the cell with data. 

Then press ctrl+C

In Excel, click the first cell below column A.

Then press ctrl+V

In SPSS, click on the first cell below pts_exam2 and drag down to select all the cell with data

Then press ctrl+C

In Excel, click the first cell below the column B.

Then press ctrl+V

Note: In order to copy data from excel to SPSS, just reverse the procedure.

Note: For researchers who use oracle SQL or mysql can directly import the file from the warehouse simply by adding the source and running the query.