Format of SPSS output tables copied to/from Excel and Word

[John F Hall]

I'm doing some comparisons of responses to items included in a "material standard of living" index in the 1973 and 1975 surveys of Quality of Life (QoL) in Britain with similar items from the 2012 Poverty and Social Exclusion survey.

 

The SSRC surveys included the question:

 

"Do you have …":

a washing machine

central heating

a car or van

a colour tv

a refrigerator

your own telephone

a second home for weekends/holidays

apart from short stays with friends or relatives, have you had

a holiday of 4 or more nights away from home?

(IF YES) Was that abroad?

 

. . with follow up questions for each item:

 

            (IF NO) Would you like one? (IF YES) Do you expect to get one in the next year or so?

 

The 2012 Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK survey presented respondents with 18 items on shuffle cards which they were asked to place on a separate card under one of three choices:

 

Already have

Don't have, but don't want

Don't have and can't afford

 

A further question presented them with 21 items which they were also asked to sort.  From these items I selected 8 "functionally equivalent" items and ran a series of MULT RESPONSE analyses to compare the 1973 and 1975 SSRC dichotomous value 4 ("Would like, but don't expect to get in next year or so") with the PSE 2012 value 3 ("Don't have and can't afford").

 

I copied the SPSS tables to Excel, but when tried to generate a single table comparing these responses, some cells and columns got heavy grid borders. 

 

	PSE	SSRC		SSRC
"Don't have:can't afford"	Percent of cases			"Would like: don't expect"
Item	2012	1973	1975	Item
Car	17.3%	15.5%	17.8%	Car or van
Washing machine	1.5%	8.5%	7.9%	Washing machine
Heating to keep home adequately warm	9.1%	30.6%	16.6%	Central heating
HD Plasma or LCD TV	18.8%	30.1%	39.5%	Colour TV
Telephone	2.9%	26.4%	12.8%	Own telephone
A second home	74.1%	57.5%	0.0%	A second home
Holiday away from home for (one week a year, not staying with family)	30.2%	11.2%	19.1%	Holiday away from home (at least 4 days, not staying with family)
Holidays abroad (once a year)	38.7%	11.1%	16.6%	Holiday abroad
(N=100%)	12097	966	932	(N=100%)

 

When I copied these to Word and tried to edit them I got messages about not being able to edit pivot tables.  Eventually I managed to create the table I wanted in Excel:

 

 

PSE	PSE	SSRC		SSRC
"Don't have:can't afford"	Percent of cases			"Would like: don't expect"
Item	2012	1973	1975	Item
Car	17.3%	15.5%	17.8%	Car or van
Washing machine	1.5%	8.5%	7.9%	Washing machine
Heating to keep home adequately warm	9.1%	30.6%	16.6%	Central heating
HD Plasma or LCD TV	18.8%	30.1%	39.5%	Colour TV
Telephone	2.9%	26.4%	12.8%	Own telephone
A second home	74.1%	57.5%	0.0%	A second home
Holiday away from home for (one week a year, not staying with family)	30.2%	11.2%	19.1%	Holiday away from home (at least 4 nights, not staying with family)
Holidays abroad (once a year)	38.7%	11.1%	16.6%	Holiday abroad
(N=100%)	12097	966	932	(N=100%)

 

Can someone explain why moving cells, columns and rows around in Excel produces the heavy grid lines?  Is there way to avoid these?

 

John F Hall  MA (Cantab) Dip Ed (Dunelm)

[Retired academic survey researcher]

 

Email:          [hidden email]

Website:     Journeys in Survey Research

Course:       Survey Analysis Workshop (SPSS)

Research:   Subjective Social Indicators (Quality of Life)

 

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