“Descriptives” (SPSS)

“Descriptives” is a method embedded within the SPSS software package. This method can be used to generate descriptive statistics for variables within an SPSS data set. We will use a modified version of the previous data set for our example.

Example:

From the “Analyze” menu, select “Descriptive Statistics”, then choose “Descriptives”.

This will present you with the menu below:

The variables which will be analyzed for output have been moved to the right side of the input screen.

The option “Save standardized values as variables” has been selected. You will have to manually select this option as it is not checked by default. Once this is complete, click “OK”.

The output that is produced is as follows:

The summary statistics table presents summary information pertaining to each variable set.

The primary reason for this exercise, was to illustrate the option selected prior to the outputs generation. That option being, “Save standardized values as variables”.

If we were again to re-visit our data sheet, you will notice that an additional column has been added.

The new data that is contained in each column, represents the z-score of each similar variable as it pertains to the larger set. This may seem like irrelevant information given the example. However, its importance will be demonstrated in the next example.