How to use SPSS/About
From Wikiversity
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SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) was purchased by IBM in 2009 and its name has changed to PASW (Predictive Analytics SoftWare). |
SPSS is a mature, proprietary, commercial statistical analysis software package with a graphical user interface. It is one of the most commonly used software solutions for statistical data analysis in academia, particularly the social sciences.
Use of SPSS is commonly, though not universally, taught to students in social science university degree programs around the world.
Several limitations, however, exist with use of SPSS, including:
- It is expensive (full version is over $1000, with annual license fees)
- Student versions are not fully functional (i.e., there are restrictions in the number of cases and variables and to advanced statistics).
Nevertheless, being able to use and teach use of SPSS in many university social science departments is almost a requirement.
[edit] Alternatives
- PSPP is a good, but incomplete free alternative, which has both GUIs and command line interfaces.
- One of the most robust R GUIs, Rcmdr is another free alternative to SPSS.
- Spreadsheet software such as OpenOffice.org/Calc can provide much of the statistical analysis requirements that may be performed by dedicated statistical analysis software packages
