Spss 13.0 Statistical Procedures Companion

You have all of the essential components: software with enough options to make a whirling dervish take pause, a data set of questionable virtue cast in a starring role, and a plot waiting to unfold. Directing all of this to a satisfying conclusion isn't easy. The goal of this book is to point your production in the right direction. Whether you're new to statistical analysis and SPSS or are a well-seasoned user who remembers how awesome the powers of SPSS-X were in 1983, this book contains tips, warnings, and examples to help you better analyze your data. Although the underlying statistical concepts are reviewed, the emphasis is on practical matters: understanding the analyses that you can perform using SPSS. The book is a companion, not a taskmaster. You won't find step-by-step instructions for solving your problems. That's because every statistical problem is unique. Its solution depends on knowing the shortcomings and strengths of the available data and on understanding enough about the subject matter to pursue intelligent, sensible analyses. That's not always an easy task, even for a statistician. (I still recall the investigator who asked for help in analyzing a data set that contained measurements taken from 20 dogs. When I asked why several dogs weighed so much more than the others, he sheepishly admitted that some of the dogs were actually pigs. That explained the outliers!) Many readers of theSPSS Guide to Data Analysis,an introductory book covering statistical concepts and the fundamentals of data analysis, asked for books providing additional statistical procedures. This book and theSPSS 13.0 Advanced Statistical Procedures Companion(Noru'is 2004) cover all of the statistical procedures in the Base system and the Regression Models and Advanced Models modules. The target audience is the data analyst, either an advanced student or a professional. The Companions offer practical suggestions and emphasize topics that arise when you are analyzing real data for presentations, reports, and dissertations, instead of the pristine data of homework assignments. For detailed information about all three books, please visit my Web site athttp://www.norusis.com. Contents of the SPSS Statistical Procedures Companion The first part of this book focuses on the most frequently used procedures in the SPSS Base system, plus the widely used logistic regression procedure from the Regression Models module. There are also introductory chapters on using the software, creating and cleaning data files, and creating new variables. Part 1 is introductory in nature and assumes little. Examples are detailed, and the pace is leisurely. The operational material should be sufficient to enable those without prior experience to use SPSS. The second part of the book is devoted to more advanced topics: the General Linear Models procedure, including univariate and multivariate analysis of variance and repeated measures, and the General Loglinear procedure. Part 2 is necessarily more complex and assumes familiarity with the underlying concepts of the general linear model. The material in this second part assumes that you have a certain amount of experience in analyzing data. The accompanying CD-ROM contains most of the real-life data sets used in the book. The instructions at the end of each chapter for obtaining the output yield the same numerical results shown here. You can use the Pivot Table Editor to rearrange tables and label the contents in any way that suits you. A few of the tables in the book contain numbers produced by SPSS but in a tabular form that is not available; these are clearly identified in the instructions.Norusis, Marija is the author of 'Spss 13.0 Statistical Procedures Companion ' with ISBN 9780131865396 and ISBN 0131865390.