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Student versions of SPSS and SPSS textbooks

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John F Hall

Student versions of SPSS and SPSS textbooks

I’m in the middle of reviewing various SPSS textbooks, most of which use the GUI exclusively, some of which mention syntax in passing (usually via PASTE) and only two of which use syntax proper. I’m a passionate supporter of syntax over GUI for most of the operations involved in basic survey processing and analysis, but I don’t wish to publish negative comments on textbooks using GUI if syntax or other facilities such as Visual Bander are not available in the student versions.

How many versions are there? Is there such a thing as a table showing what each version contains?

My selection of suitable books, and my comments on them (including links to excerpts and reviews) is on the SPSS textbooks page on my website. If anyone has any suggestions for additional books, especially for survey analysis, please let me know.

John Hall

[hidden email]

www.surveyresearch.weebly.com

David Marso

Re: Student versions of SPSS and SPSS textbooks

Administrator

FWIW: Not having syntax support in the student version is one of the stupidest, short sighted things SPSS ever did. Really sets up the noob for some long term BAD work habits. GACK!

Please reply to the list and not to my personal email.
Those desiring my consulting or training services please feel free to email me.
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Art Kendall

Re: Student versions of SPSS and SPSS textbooks

Definitely!
Indubitably!
Hear! Hear!
Amen!

Demonstrating (aka modeling) bad habits is very poor teaching, especially at the beginning.

I have often said so on these lists in and to clients at schools who teach SPSS.

Any version that does not support syntax should be avoided.

Lack of exposure to syntax deceives students into thinking that doing an analysis is a one-shot activity instead of a recursive draft-think-draft-think... process.
Using syntax should help students realize that like any other writing it is an iterative process.
Using syntax should help students realize the value of communicating to others how you went about your analysis.
Doing the "audit check" (aka as "quality assurance review", or "referencing") on syntax done by others helps to develop fluency and flexibility in syntax.
Preparing one's writing for review and for sharing helps the writer be aware of how (s)he was thinking.
Talking to reviewers helps the student grasp how well they are communicating.

Anybody who follows this list or the newsgroup soon becomes aware of the value of being explicit when asking for help.

I do not oppose the use of the GUI. I believe it can be very helpful in writing drafts of segments of syntax. I use it almost all of the time. When I post tested syntax to this list, I almost always use the GUI to draft some of the syntax.

I would be will to bet that even people like David, Marta, Bruce, Raynald, ViAnn, and Jon seldom if ever write syntax without some re-writing. I know that is true for me and I have been using SPSS since 1972.

BTW even in writing this email, I went back a couple of times to revise what I said. Writing syntax is writing. Writing is a recursive process.

Art Kendall
Social Research Consultants

On 5/8/2011 1:57 PM, David Marso wrote:

FWIW:  Not having syntax support in the student version is one of the
stupidest, short sighted things SPSS ever did.  Really sets up the noob for
some long term BAD work habits.  GACK!

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Art Kendall
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John F Hall

Re: Student versions of SPSS and SPSS textbooks

Somehow the link in my signature got corrupted yesterday (no ‘s’ in research) and people got 404 “Site not published” messages from Weebly. It seems to work OK now.

I take it from Art and David’s replies that the Student Version doesn’t have syntax, but what about the Graduate Pack? Rather undermines my comments on books aimed at students, unless they can access the full version on campus mainframes or networks. (See “SPSS textbooks” on my site.)

Syntax is so much simpler and quicker for common operations such as data transformations (compute, recode, if etc.) tabulation (freq, cros, means etc) and simple graphics (freq /for not /bar). The cumbersome procedures using GUI for these has to be seen to be believed: to prove the point there parallel examples of syntax and GUI for the same task in many of my tutorials. Even initial data definition (data list, labels, missing values) is safer and quicker with syntax, which I often construct first in Word. Several useful procedures are only available in syntax.

John F Hall

[hidden email]

www.surveyresearch.weebly.com

From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Art Kendall
Sent: 08 May 2011 20:47
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: Student versions of SPSS and SPSS textbooks

FWIW:  Not having syntax support in the student version is one of the

stupidest, short sighted things SPSS ever did.  Really sets up the noob for

some long term BAD work habits.  GACK!

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View this message in context: http://spssx-discussion.1045642.n5.nabble.com/Student-versions-of-SPSS-and-SPSS-textbooks-tp4379740p4380283.html

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John F Hall

Re: Student versions of SPSS and SPSS textbooks

The extract from SPSS literature for limitations of the Student Version is now posted on:

http://surveyresearch.weebly.com/uploads/2/9/9/8/2998485/student_version_limitation_list.pdf

Albert-Jan suggested PSPP, but it looks a tad fearsome for beginners. Better to persuade IBM SPSS to implement syntax in the student version, even if it is a stripped down version.

John F Hall

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www.surveyresearch.weebly.com

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P.van Groenestijn

output of the genlinmixed procedure

Dear list members,

(this is a repost of Michael Mitchell dec 2 2010, I have the same problem)
I am using the GENLINMIXED procedure in SPSS 19 and want to see the
output with the regression coefficients, SE's, p values as the
defaultdisplay. Currently, such information is displayed like a
graphical path diagram. In order to get a traditional display of the
output using a regression table, I need to double click on the output
windowto bring up the model viewer, then click on the box with the path
style output, then click the pulldown to change the "style" from
"diagram" to "table", then I need to click on the "coefficient" heading
within the table to get the full table to be displayed.

I tried OMS but did not succeed.

Another problem seems that it looks like there is a maximum of 10
variables for the subcommand /FIXED EFFECTS.

Any help is appreciated!
Kind regards,

Pieter van Groenestijn

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Faculteit Sociale Wetenschappen
Research Technische OndersteuningsGroep
Thomas van Aquinostraat 4.01.04
tel: 024-3612035
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John F Hall

Re: Student versions of SPSS and SPSS textbooks

In reply to this post by John F Hall

I have now clarified the situation regarding the Student Version, found the table I was looking for, and have modified my website accordingly (See: http://surveyresearch.weebly.com/spss-and-survey-analysis-workshop.html) which now contains the appropriate hyperlinks.

Syntax is not implemented in the Student Version (which is owned by Prentice-Hall and is only available bundled with certain textbooks) It also has other limitations: (see http://surveyresearch.weebly.com/uploads/2/9/9/8/2998485/student_version_limitation_list.pdf)

Some sites offer (trial, time-limited) free downloads of earlier versions.

(See: http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=3&oq=spss+student+version+free+download&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4ADRA_enFR420FR421&q=spss+student+version+free+download+18#sclient=psy&hl=en&rlz=1T4ADRA_enFR420FR421&source=hp&q=spss+student+version+free+download+&aq=0&aqi=g2g-j3&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&fp=1&cad=b ).

However, most users will have access to the full version via their school and workplace or by purchasing the Gradpack version, which is specially priced for students, but time-limited to 6 or 12 months.

See http://www-01.ibm.com/software/analytics/spss/products/statistics/gradpack/ ).

Full details are on IBM SPSS Solutions for Education (http://www-01.ibm.com/software/analytics/spss/academic/products.html) and there is a comparison table http://www-01.ibm.com/software/analytics/spss/products/statistics/edition-comparison-academic.html showing what is available in each version.

John F Hall

[hidden email]