IBM SPSS Essentials, 2nd Edition

7Descriptive Statistics

Chapter Menu

• Chapter Learning Objectives
• Frequencies
• Displaying Data Graphically
• Descriptive Statistics
• A General Note on Analyses
• A General Note About Output Files
• Summary

Chapter Learning Objectives

1. Requesting frequency distributions
2. Requesting descriptive statistics
3. Using frequency information to create new variables
4. Visual displays of data

In this chapter, we will be covering ways to request meaningful descriptive output (information) about our data. This is where we will actually begin to request output from SPSS (as opposed to the previous actions such as creating and saving data files where output files appeared but were not directly requested).

There are two basic but very useful commands that allow you to “get a good sense” of your data: “descriptives” and “frequencies”. These are the two most basic and common descriptive commands you will use (e.g. the SPSS commands that request descriptive information about your data). In this chapter, we will practice both using these commands as well as interpreting the output.

Frequencies

If you want a broad visual representation of what your data looks like, you can (and should) request a frequency distribution. This chapter demonstrates how to request this information in both table (using the “frequencies” command) and visual forms (e.g. requesting a histogram). The data we will be using ...