Re: How to enter cross-sectional time-series data into SPSS for correlation

Posted by dave on
URL: http://spssx-discussion.165.s1.nabble.com/How-to-enter-cross-sectional-time-series-data-into-SPSS-for-correlation-tp5726681p5726915.html

@ David: You say that sufficient data is missing. Could you clarify what I should post to ease your helping efforts?

I realize that I have to be more precise re my goals. I want to do a small agenda-setting-study. My research question is: Does Twitter has an influence on Spon (a huge German news website)? Or more formally speaking: Does the content of Twitter on <any relevant topic> at T1 (e.g. morning of Day1) has an influence on the content of Spon at T2 (e.g. evening of Day1)? I used the 2014 European Parliament Elections as a case for testing. I coded <Outlet>, <Day>, <Time> and <Topics> to get an idea whether there may be an influence.

With different content and outlets, this is often done in literature. Authors correlate <Outlet1_TopicX_T1> (one combined var) with <Outlet2_TopicX_T2> (another combined var) and they also correlate <Outlet2_TopicX_T1> with <Outlet1_TopicX_T2>. These two Pearson's are then used to test for significance of the direction (cross-lagged-correlation with Rozelle-Campbell-baseline). This can be done for a month or so with the effect that one can monitor quite closely whether there may be any connection.

The last step (checking for significance), I think, must be done outside of SPSS and is not my concern right now. My problem is that I do not manage to get my data in shape so that I can correlate <Outlet1_TopicX_T1> (one combined var) with <Outlet2_TopicX_T2> (another combined var) and so on.

Does that clarify my approach and problem?