Descriptive Statistics  & Graphing
Psyc 201    Lab 8 
Dr. R. G.Tonks

Part I: Data collection

Start SPSS with a new file and add the following variables: PN -(participant number), Age, Gender, handedness (Left, Right, Ambi), Years at Camosun, how much you like it here (1 not much - 5 loads).

 Add your own data and that for the people in your group (if you need to get some from other groups).

Review the nature of nominal and interval variables and then code the nominal variables
 using 1, 2, 3, etc to designate group membership (i.e., 1-female, 2-male).

Once you have your data set together, run it through the following analysis (from part II)

If you are not sure of the nature of the variables ask the instructor or Lab Assistant for help in decoding the variable names.

Part IIA: Descriptives

Open your data file using SPSS

Click on Analyze then Descriptive Statistics then Descriptives

Add each nominal variable (except for Participant Number to the variables box
Check to see the options to make sure the mean, minimum, maximum and standard deviation are checked
Click OK and let the analysis run

Q1: Look at the data and the nature of these variables does it make sense? 
What have you learned? What might you do otherwise?
 
  Now go back to the data file and
Click on Analyze then Descriptive Statistics then Descriptives
Add each interval or ratio variable (except for PN) to the items box
Check to see the options to make sure the mean, minimum, maximum and standard deviation are checked
Click OK and let the analysis run

Q2: Look at the data and the nature of these variables does it make sense?
What have you learned about them? What might you do otherwise?

Part IIB: Frequencies

Now that you have had a look at the nominal and interval data using descriptive (mean scores) and made sense of which are best and which are not,  go back to your data set and and Click on Analyze then Descriptive Statistics then Frequencies.

This will allow you to acquire frequency counts for the nominal data as well as to produce graphs for it.

Add each nominal and interval variable (except for PN) to the variables box to the data file and this time
Click OK and look at the output and consider the analysis of these variables as to whether or not it makes sense.

Q3: Which type of data analysis was best for which type of variable?

Part III Graphing:
There are two ways to get graphs from SPSS, one is to

Click on Graphs, go down to Legacy Dialogues and then to histogram and select one of the nominal variables and click OK  (Note: histograms provide the same information as frequency analysis) .

The second way is to do it through frequencies (see part IIB above) and click  Analyze then Descriptive Statistics then Frequencies then click on charts and click next to bar charts (OK) [note that you can also click on histogram here too]

Now try this again with one of the interval variables, and complete this same exercise.

Copy and paste one of your graphs into your word doc to be submitted with the answers to the questions above.

Q4:  Which style of producing a graph is best? Why?

 Next week you will be shown a few basic tests that may be of use in your research projects.

If you want look ahead and try it out...

 The examples used here will include crosstabs for categorical data,
comparing frequencies across two categories (i.e., gender and identity status (isi)).

Here check the chi square is selected.

We will also look at ANOVA for one nominal and one interval variable