Menus Available in the Data Editor Window
The data editor window is the default window when you run SPSS. The data
worksheet works just like a spreadsheet, where a column represents a variable
and a row represents a case or an observation. Many tasks in SPSS are
performed by selecting appropriate "Pull-down" menus.
Data Editor has two views:
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Data View, which is as shown above. The data view worksheet works just
like a spreadsheet, where a column represents a variable and a row
represents a case or an observation. Many tasks in SPSS are performed by
selecting appropriate “Pull-down” menus. Cells in the data view contain
data values. They do not contain formulas as in some spreadsheet programs.
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Variable View window: Click on 'Variable View' shown at the bottom of
the Data Editor, The variable view contains
descriptions of each variable attributes in the data file. The rows contain
the variables and the columns contain the variable attributes. Variables
can be deleted and the variable attributes can be
modified. Note that defining variable properties in variable view can also
be accomplished by using “Define Variable Properties” that is available on
the Data menu in the Data Editor Window.
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The menus in the Data Editor window include:
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File: To open an existing file, to read data (from a
text data file or from an application [like Excel] data file) into Data
Editor window, to save a data file, and to exit SPSS for Windows.
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Edit: To make changes like copy, cut or paste to the
Data Editor window. These functions work just like a spreadsheet.
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Data: To define variables, insert variables or cases,
sort cases, merge files, split files, select cases and use a variable to
weight cases.
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Transform: SPSS can easily create new variables through
variable transformation or recoding the data values of an existing
variable.
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Analyze: SPSS provides an extensive list of statistical
techniques for data analysis. In a separate page, Statistical
Techniques, we discuss many of these statistical techniques in
details.
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Graphs: To obtain high resolution plots and graphs,
which can be edited in Chart Editor window. SPSS provides various commonly
used high resolution statistical graphs. Go to Graphs Menu to choose the
graphs that fits your need and follow the dialog box to create your
statistical graphs.
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Utilities: To run script and to display information on
the contents of SPSS data files.
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Add-Ons: SPSS provides many other analytical techniques that are
sold separately. If your institution/company purchases some of these
additional add-on modules, you can run these techniques through the Add-Ons
Menu. In this workshop, we will demonstrate one of the menu items in the
Utility Menu: the Programmability Extension.
Programmability Extension allows users to integrate the R program into
SPSS. This function is available in SPSS 16.0 and latter
versions.
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Window: To move to an open window or to see which
window is active. The window with a check mark is the active one.
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Help: To get help on topics in SPSS and to ask the
statistics coach some questions. This is a very powerful tool. If you can not find enough information in the web workshop,
you may be able to find them in the Help system.
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After understanding the Data Editor Window, you may want to learn about
using SPSS for data manipulation, including data input, sorting, merging,
transformation and others. Details are given in the page of
Manipulation of Data
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