How to Open or Enter Data in SPSS
Start by finding the SPSS icon on your desktop, and double-clicking it. You will see the
following window:
You can choose “type in data” if
you have raw data (paper forms,
etc.) to type in …
Or you can “open an existing data
source” if you are working with a
dataset that someone has already
created.
For now, choose “type in data.”
Next, you will see the SPSS data window:
Notice the two tabs at the bottom: “Data View” and “Variable View.” You are looking at
the “Data View,” where the columns (across the top) are the names of variables, and the
rows (down the side) are the individual participants who provide data. This is where you
will type in your data.
Here are some data to work with:
Group 1
Group 2
18 21 43 17 20 19 22 30 28 22 24 28 32 17 16
12 20 26 11 15 14 18 9 6 14 10 8 14 12 13
Note that although these data look like a list of scores, there are really two variables that
describe each person. One is their group membership (group 1 or 2), and the other is their
score on the measure.
Before starting to type in the data, click on the “Variable View” to name your variables.
Type the variable names here
(in this case, “group” and “score”)
This menu tells you if the variable is Nlevel (categorical), O-level, or I/R-level
(i.e., a “scale”).
Click on the grey box that appears
in this field, to specify whether a
the data in a field should be numbers
(“numeric”) or text (a “string”).
You can look at the “values” of a variable, to tell you what a
“1” means—this field gives you text labels for the different levels
of a variable.
The “Variable View” screen lets you name your variables, and also tells you something
about them. For now, name two variables: The first one is “group,” and the second one is
“score.” When you are ready to run some statistical analyses, you will be able to refer to
the “Variable View” if you want to find out whether a variable is N-level or I/R-level (by
looking at the “Measure” column), and to find out what the different numbers mean for a
variable (by looking at the “Values” column). This screen gives reference information
about each of the variables in your dataset.
Now go back to the “Data View.” Your variable names should now appear at the top.
Enter the data—we have 15 people who are in group 1, each of whom has a score to be
entered in the “score” column, and another 15 people in group 2. Notice that “group 1”
and “group 2” aren’t different variables; they’re different levels of the same variable
(which is “group” membership). Each person has one and only one score on “group,”
and one and only one score on “score”:
Now you have a dataset, and you can start to do some calculations on it.