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Antje Bothin

Some reflections on the positive and negative uses of SPSS, including some ethical considerations. Antje Bothin. What is SPSS? What can we do with SPSS? How to use SPSS? Positive Aspects Negative Aspects Ethical Considerations. What is SPSS?. General statistics software

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Antje Bothin

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  1. Some reflections on the positive and negative uses of SPSS, including some ethical considerations Antje Bothin

  2. What is SPSS? • What can we do with SPSS? • How to use SPSS? • Positive Aspects • Negative Aspects • Ethical Considerations

  3. What is SPSS? • General statistics software • http://www.spss.com/ • “Statistical Package for the Social Sciences” • Graphical user interface

  4. What can we do with SPSS? • Data entry and management • Data analysis (statistical tests)

  5. What can we do with SPSS? • Data presentation (bar chart, histogram, scatter plot etc.)

  6. How to use SPSS? • Build-in help and examples Many books: • Field, Andy. “Discovering Statistics Using SPSS”, Sage Publications, 2005.

  7. Positive Aspects (1) • Popular, widely used  lots of people to help • Powerful statistics – quick and easy • Handles large datasets • Easy to learn • User friendly (windows, boxes, menus) • Datasets easily entered, loaded and saved • Allows data transformation

  8. Positive Aspects (2) • SPSS files can be easily imported by other programs • Shows results that can be easily saved • Graphics can be exported (hmtl, PowerPoint) • Runs on many platforms (Windows, Mac) • Own syntax, compatible with other languages (e.g. Python)

  9. Negative Aspects (1) • Expensive (add-ons) and complicated licensing process • Often compatibility issues with prior versions • Lack of more advanced mathematical functionality (compared to other software)

  10. Negative Aspects (2) • Danger of inappropriate analysis because of the given menu structure • Sometimes irrelevant output  difficult to know what is important • Poor default graphics that are sometimes difficult to customise

  11. Ethical Considerations (1) • A study that involves human subjects?  research ethics approval procedure • Description of the study (information sheet) and participant consent form • Data collection  “do no harm”, safety • Privacy issues (sensitive personal data such as age, gender, ethical origin, salary etc.)

  12. Ethical Considerations (2) • Anonymised data entered into SPSS  example: survey data • Importance of results (statistical significance)  general implications for research area • Data protection and storage  keep or delete? • Use of results in publications

  13. Thank you

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