SPSS Statistics Workbook For Dummies

Chapter 2

Defining Data

IN THIS CHAPTER

Defining variables

Seeing how to work with dates and times

Finding out how to copy data properties

SPSS data has three major components: cases (Chapter 3), variables (Chapters 4 and 5), and metadata (Chapter 2). Metadata consists of your variable attributes, or definitions. Metadata tells SPSS how a variable is defined and how it can be used. Without a definition, a number serves no purpose. For example, the number 34 could be the number of tickets purchased or the number of sales in the last hour; therefore, a variable’s definition is important.

In this chapter, you learn about variable definitions, or attributes. You also work with date and time variables. Finally, because defining data can be time-consuming, we demonstrate a special shortcut menu for copying your data and variable definitions from one dataset to another.

Defining Metadata

Entering data into SPSS is a two-step process. First, you define what sort of data you’ll be entering. Then you enter the values. In this section, we briefly describe some of the most important variable attributes in the Variable View tab of Data Editor.

Each variable characteristic has a default, so ...