You can define a sets of variables which will then populate a dialog box list with only the variables in the sets. IMHO, this is one of the least useful features in SPSS but might be useful in this context. Way too much abstraction for me but then my data files rarely have more than 100 variables.
Too bad that Cmd-click doesn’t work on the Mac to do a discontiguous selection. It used to in the old days of Finder ;-)
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John F Hall
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2012 10:51 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: SPSS 20 Help for Mac
Scott
The short answer is to use syntax instead of the GUI, but that means typing out the variable names individually with a risk of typing errors. If you constantly want to use the same set of non-contiguous variables, it might be worth keeping such a list in a separate Word file so that you can copy-paste it (or bits of it) as and when needed into SPSS syntax.
I hardly ever use the GUI, but I just tried:
Analyze >> Descriptive Statistics >> Frequencies
to paste
satis
agetens
marsta
into the Variable(s) pane, but it doesn’t work.
Looks like you’re stuck with the long way round, but my tip is very useful for other purposes (eg keeping long bits of MULT RESPONSE syntax).
You can alter your SPSS settings. Check out:
Edit >> Options
and play around.
John F Hall (Mr)
Email: [hidden email]
Website: www.surveyresearch.weebly.com
-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [hidden email] On Behalf Of Scott
Sent: 10 October 2012 02:18
To: [hidden email]
Subject: SPSS 20 Help for Mac
Hello,
I have been attempting to find the answers to these questions for some time.
In SPSS when I want to run an analysis I cannot choose multiple variables unless they are consecutive.
Typically you can choose different variables by pressing the command key and clicking (I am using SPSS 20 for Mac, but a similar operation is control and click on Windows), but that doesn't work. If I press the shift bar it selects the variable between the one originally chosen and the last one I choose.
Another thing is in my outputs I get so much stuff that I don't need (syntax info, info about the file and computer I run the analysis on); is there any way to get rid of that stuff from automatically coming up after running an analysis?
Thank you for your time and any guidance you can lend.
S
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