Survey Analysis Workshop (SPSS)
[Page last updated 3 April 2015]
[NB: Here and throughout this site SPSS refers to IBM® SPSS® Statistics software]
Norman Nie, one of the originators of SPSS, died on 3rd April 2015.
Norman Nie’s contribution to survey research and to quantitative methods in the social sciences was, and remains, invaluable. Tributes continue to pour in. Oral History of Norman Nie is a transcript of a 1986 interview with Luanne Johnson, Computer History Museum.
ViAnn Beadle writes:
Norman Nie, one of the principal creators of SPSS died today. I have known Norman since 1969 when I was a graduate student in Political Science at the University of Chicago. Norman gave me my first real job in 1972 and my life would not be what it is without his mentorship, encouragement, and support.
Norman was a graduate student at Stanford University in the ‘60s who had a big problem to solve: how to analyze thousands of political surveys conducted among residents of 7 nations with nominally Democratic governments. In those days, the tool of choice was an IBM counter-sorter which was used to tabulate punch cards. Norman along with Tex Hull and Dale Bent (also at Stanford) developed a program to run on an IBM 360 to do all the drudge work and called it the Statistical Program for the Social Sciences. It was later renamed SPSS. Norman was the first and most influential user of SPSS. Norman and Tex both took jobs at the University of Chicago, Norman in the Political Science Department and Tex at the Computation Center. Even before they came to Chicago, SPSS was being adopted by graduate schools and governmental agencies. I was hired to provide technical support to the rapidly expanding user base for SPSS and retired in 2007.
Norman was first and foremost, a talented and respected Political Scientist and probably more proud of his contributions to Political Science than SPSS.
There would be no SPSS without Norman and all former and current SPSSers who knew him, miss him today.
Survey Analysis Workshop is a complete teach-yourself course on the use of SPSS to capture, process, manage and analyse data from questionnaire surveys. It contains learning materials based on the unique practice-oriented course (postgraduate, part-time, evening, hands-on ) which I designed and taught from 1976 until 1992. Workshop materials have been converted, updated and greatly expanded for use with SPSS for Windows (currently release 22). They consist of extensive entry-level tutorials and proceed gently, step-by-step, with full colour screenshots at each step.
They are for use with SPSS for Windows and will work with all releases from SPSS 11 onwards. The examples on this site have been generated with successive releases SPSS 15, PASW Statistics 18, IBM SPSS Statistics 19 and IBM SPSS Statistics 21 and 22 (how are we poor tutors to keep up?) and use SPSS syntax (its English-like command language) in preference to the drop-down menus from the Graphic User Interface (GUI). However, many examples and exercises are also repeated using the drop-down menus. There is a full range of supporting materials (facsimile questionnaires, raw data sets, SPSS saved files) from my own surveys and from major survey series, as well as links to SPSS tutorials and useful materials available elsewhere via the web.
What is SPSS? is a brief history of the development of SPSS
SPSS Without Tears is my quick intro to SPSS.
Summary guide to SPSS tutorials is a page with links to, and listing the contents of, the four blocks of tutorials.
Catalogue of SPSS tutorials is an Excel file containing a full listing (with hyperlinks) of all tutorials. (Does not display in a window, but downloads as a separate file: check downloads at bottom left of this screen) [May not always be entirely up-to-date, but there are links to 625 pages of documents as at 10 March 2014] There is also a pdf file Catalogue of SPSS tutorials which displays as a new window.
Guide to page and pop-out menus is a pdf document showing the screenshots for pop-out menus and sub-menus.
[May not always be entirely up-to-date, but shows you how the pop-out menus work]
The full course starts on page Introduction to Survey Analysis Workshop (SPSS)
Enjoy!
There is a comprehensive set of Statistical Notes,specially written to accompany this course. See also page: A note on statistical concepts
.
[NB: Here and throughout this site SPSS refers to IBM® SPSS® Statistics software]
Norman Nie, one of the originators of SPSS, died on 3rd April 2015.
Norman Nie’s contribution to survey research and to quantitative methods in the social sciences was, and remains, invaluable. Tributes continue to pour in. Oral History of Norman Nie is a transcript of a 1986 interview with Luanne Johnson, Computer History Museum.
ViAnn Beadle writes:
Norman Nie, one of the principal creators of SPSS died today. I have known Norman since 1969 when I was a graduate student in Political Science at the University of Chicago. Norman gave me my first real job in 1972 and my life would not be what it is without his mentorship, encouragement, and support.
Norman was a graduate student at Stanford University in the ‘60s who had a big problem to solve: how to analyze thousands of political surveys conducted among residents of 7 nations with nominally Democratic governments. In those days, the tool of choice was an IBM counter-sorter which was used to tabulate punch cards. Norman along with Tex Hull and Dale Bent (also at Stanford) developed a program to run on an IBM 360 to do all the drudge work and called it the Statistical Program for the Social Sciences. It was later renamed SPSS. Norman was the first and most influential user of SPSS. Norman and Tex both took jobs at the University of Chicago, Norman in the Political Science Department and Tex at the Computation Center. Even before they came to Chicago, SPSS was being adopted by graduate schools and governmental agencies. I was hired to provide technical support to the rapidly expanding user base for SPSS and retired in 2007.
Norman was first and foremost, a talented and respected Political Scientist and probably more proud of his contributions to Political Science than SPSS.
There would be no SPSS without Norman and all former and current SPSSers who knew him, miss him today.
Survey Analysis Workshop is a complete teach-yourself course on the use of SPSS to capture, process, manage and analyse data from questionnaire surveys. It contains learning materials based on the unique practice-oriented course (postgraduate, part-time, evening, hands-on ) which I designed and taught from 1976 until 1992. Workshop materials have been converted, updated and greatly expanded for use with SPSS for Windows (currently release 22). They consist of extensive entry-level tutorials and proceed gently, step-by-step, with full colour screenshots at each step.
They are for use with SPSS for Windows and will work with all releases from SPSS 11 onwards. The examples on this site have been generated with successive releases SPSS 15, PASW Statistics 18, IBM SPSS Statistics 19 and IBM SPSS Statistics 21 and 22 (how are we poor tutors to keep up?) and use SPSS syntax (its English-like command language) in preference to the drop-down menus from the Graphic User Interface (GUI). However, many examples and exercises are also repeated using the drop-down menus. There is a full range of supporting materials (facsimile questionnaires, raw data sets, SPSS saved files) from my own surveys and from major survey series, as well as links to SPSS tutorials and useful materials available elsewhere via the web.
What is SPSS? is a brief history of the development of SPSS
SPSS Without Tears is my quick intro to SPSS.
Summary guide to SPSS tutorials is a page with links to, and listing the contents of, the four blocks of tutorials.
Catalogue of SPSS tutorials is an Excel file containing a full listing (with hyperlinks) of all tutorials. (Does not display in a window, but downloads as a separate file: check downloads at bottom left of this screen) [May not always be entirely up-to-date, but there are links to 625 pages of documents as at 10 March 2014] There is also a pdf file Catalogue of SPSS tutorials which displays as a new window.
Guide to page and pop-out menus is a pdf document showing the screenshots for pop-out menus and sub-menus.
[May not always be entirely up-to-date, but shows you how the pop-out menus work]
The full course starts on page Introduction to Survey Analysis Workshop (SPSS)
Enjoy!
There is a comprehensive set of Statistical Notes,specially written to accompany this course. See also page: A note on statistical concepts
.