Descriptive Statistics Analysis in SPSS – 2
Suppose that the following survey is given to a group of 15 patients.
-
Age
Gender
o ( Male / Female )
Marital Status
o ( Married / Divorced / Widowed / Never been married )
How often do you experience chronic pain?
o ( Very often / Sometimes / Seldom / Never)
During the past 24 hours, how many different kinds of medication have you taken?
o ( 0-1 / 2-3 / 4 or more )
Obtained information is shown in the following table:
patient
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
age
57
48
39
61
42
39
24
65
33
71
46
51
48
63
47
gender
male
female
female
male
female
male
female
male
female
female
male
female
female
female
male
marital_st
divorced
married
widowed
married
never been married
divorced
never been married
widowed
widowed
married
never been married
divorced
married
widowed
divorced
pain
seldom
sometimes
very often
never
sometimes
seldom
sometimes
very often
sometimes
never
seldom
very often
never
sometimes
very often
nr_of_med
2-3
0-1
4 or more
0-1
2-3
2-3
0-1
2-3
4 or more
0-1
2-3
0-1
2-3
2-3
0-1
a) Define the variables in SPSS
To do so, first go to the ‘Variable View’ tab in SPSS. List the variables in that page:
1
N. İlke Akçay
Eastern Mediterranean University, 2016
b) Represent the data set in SPSS
To do so, go to ‘Data View’ tab and enter the data values.
c) Find the mean, std deviation, min and max of the numerical variable ‘age’.
In order to do descriptive statistics analysis for a numerical variable, use the following menu:
Analysis -> Descriptive Statistics -> Frequencies
In the frequencies window, select the variable that you will analyze. Then, click on ‘Statistics’
button. In the new window, choose the statistics that you want to calculate. Finally, click on ‘continue’
and then ‘OK’ buttons, and you will get the results in the output window.
d) Find the percentages for each categorical variable: gender, marital status, having chronic pain,
number of medicine type taken.
If you want to find percentages of categorical variable, you again need to use the same menu:
Analysis -> Descriptive Statistics -> Frequencies
However, in this case you do not need to choose any statistics by clicking on ‘Statistics’ button. It
is enough to choose the variable(s), and make sure that the ‘display frequency tables’ box is selected.
Then, click on ‘continue’ and ‘ok’. As a result, you will obtain the percentages on the output window.
2
N. İlke Akçay
Eastern Mediterranean University, 2016