Chapter 12 IBM SPSS Data Preparation
IBM SPSS Statistics is comprised of a base system, which has many options for data preparation, graphing, and data analysis. Users can also add modules that provide additional functionality. Personally, I would recommend some of these modules, like the Custom Tables module, to just about every user. Other modules, like the Forecasting module, are very specialized, and I would only recommend it to users that truly require these techniques. One module that SPSS Statistics users may not be aware of but which can be very useful is the Data Preparation module.
The Data Preparation module consists of four techniques: two (Validation and Identify Unusual Cases) are located under the Data menu; and two (Optimal Binning and Data Preparation for Modeling) are positioned under the Transform menu. These four techniques can be used to improve the quality of your data before performing data analysis.
Unfortunately, to provide a complete example of each of the techniques would result in an incredibly long chapter, therefore I will only cover two of these techniques (Identify Unusual Cases and Optimal Binning). I have chosen these two procedures because I wanted to show at least one technique from each menu (Data and Transform), but also because I find Identify Unusual Cases and Optimal Binning to be the most useful of the four components of the Data Preparation module.
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