Module III: Summarizing and Describing Data

Before beginning any data analysis you should become familiar with your data set. The purpose of this module is to acquaint you with several options that are available in SPSS to help you understand, summarize, and describe your data. You want your data to be as accurate and complete as possible so that you can report reliable results with confidence. While it is the rare data set that is perfect, it is in your best interest to try to eliminate any errors within your control. In small data sets or in those with which the researcher is familiar, some of this checking can be done visually by simply looking at the raw data. Did you, for example, use the cursor key rather than the tab or enter key when entering raw data? Did you mistakenly leave out an important variable? Does your data show only 99 cases when you should have 100? Do you have a value of "99" or "999" when your scale runs from 0 to 9? These minor and easy-to-correct errors can have enormous impact on your analysis and should be corrected before going any further.

When working with large data sets or those new to you, a mere visual inspection of the raw data is not sufficient. In these cases it is recommended that you let SPSS help you become familiar with your data.

Module Contents:

1. Frequencies
2. Descriptives
3. Explore and Crosstabs