requesting assistance inputting data

[C. Salmon]

Hello,
I'm new to SPSSX-L.

I'm working on my dissertation - last stages of data analysis.

I have a question about inputting data into SPSS. It may be a rather
simple question for advanced stats gurus, but my stats classes were
long long ago and I don't remember much! So, please be patient with
me.   :-)

I am looking at course evaluations for individual faculty over the
course of 4-5 semesters. I hope to determine that means from the last
3 semesters are higher than the first semester (the faculty
participated in a professional development program and I want to see
if it had an effect).

The problem is that I don't have individual cases to input; I have
only summary data for each questions - essentially frequencies and
percentages. You know, thesummarized results that faculty get after
the semester had ended.

How do I put this into SPSS? What goes where? AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

Thanks for any help!
Christine

[Dale Glaser]

Christine...one option is to create a 'frequency' variable with the actual counts, create a variable that corresponds to the category coding and then use the weight function in SPSS...for instance, say we have a Likert scaled variable with 5 categories as follows

  FREQ   Item1
  12         1
  14         2
  12         3
  17         4
  23         5

  you then weight by 'freq' , and you will find that when you run the statistics for 'item1' it will give you desc statistics.....mean, median, sd, etc.......

  hope this helps...dale

"C. Salmon" <[hidden email]> wrote:
  Hello,
I'm new to SPSSX-L.

I'm working on my dissertation - last stages of data analysis.

I have a question about inputting data into SPSS. It may be a rather
simple question for advanced stats gurus, but my stats classes were
long long ago and I don't remember much! So, please be patient with
me. :-)

I am looking at course evaluations for individual faculty over the
course of 4-5 semesters. I hope to determine that means from the last
3 semesters are higher than the first semester (the faculty
participated in a professional development program and I want to see
if it had an effect).

The problem is that I don't have individual cases to input; I have
only summary data for each questions - essentially frequencies and
percentages. You know, thesummarized results that faculty get after
the semester had ended.

How do I put this into SPSS? What goes where? AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

Thanks for any help!
Christine



Dale Glaser, Ph.D.
Principal--Glaser Consulting
Lecturer/Adjunct Faculty--SDSU/USD/CSUSM/AIU
President-Elect, San Diego Chapter of
American Statistical Association
3115 4th Avenue
San Diego, CA 92103
phone: [phone]
fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]
website: www.glaserconsult.com

[Dominic Lusinchi]

Christine,

It would seem that you have two types of variables in your data set.
Quantitative variables, since you mention "means"; categorical variables,
since you mention "frequencies" and "percentages".

I am not sure, without having more information, how to deal with the former.

Regarding categorical variables: you can enter counts into SPSS but they
must be used as weights. For example, let say that you have a variable for
gender coded 1 for Female and 2 for Male. In the data view of the data
editor window, you would enter two variables: gender and, let's call it,
counts. Because gender has only 2 categories, it would occupy two rows: the
first row in the gender column would have 1 (for female) and the second you
would enter 2 for male. The second variable count would have on the first
row the number of females in your study, say 50, and the second row would
contain the number of males in your study, say 45.

If you were to run Analyze>Frequencies on gender, make sure you go first to
Data>Weight cases... Weight cases by>Frequency variable:counts.

Of course this is not very informative, but I am just using it as an example
on how to enter aggregated data into SPSS and use them as weights.

If you cross classified 2 categorical variables each with two values, you
would have to enter 3 variables: the X variable, the Y variable and the
count variable. You also use 4 rows for each variable: one for each cell of
the crosstab table.

Hope this is not too confusing.

Dominic Lusinchi
Statistician
Far West Research
Statistical Consulting
San Francisco, California
415-664-3032
www.farwestresearch.com

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of C.
Salmon
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 5:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: requesting assistance inputting data

Hello,
I'm new to SPSSX-L.

I'm working on my dissertation - last stages of data analysis.

I have a question about inputting data into SPSS. It may be a rather
simple question for advanced stats gurus, but my stats classes were
long long ago and I don't remember much! So, please be patient with
me.   :-)

I am looking at course evaluations for individual faculty over the
course of 4-5 semesters. I hope to determine that means from the last
3 semesters are higher than the first semester (the faculty
participated in a professional development program and I want to see
if it had an effect).

The problem is that I don't have individual cases to input; I have
only summary data for each questions - essentially frequencies and
percentages. You know, thesummarized results that faculty get after
the semester had ended.

How do I put this into SPSS? What goes where? AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

Thanks for any help!
Christine