SPSS: Simple descriptive statistics

School of Geography, University of Leeds


To get hold of simple descriptive statistics for your data, go to the following menu item...

Screenshot of menu item: Analyse > Descriptive Statistics > Descriptives

This will bring up the dialog box below.

Screenshot of dialog box: Analyse > Descriptive Statistics > Descriptives

To pick the variables you want to generate the statistics for, select them in the left side of the dialog box (example hightlighted red above), and click the arrow button in the middle of the dialog box to shift them into the "Variable(s)" box. You can select several variables at once using the "shift" and "control (Ctrl)" keys. You can shift variables out of the "Variable(s)" box using the reverse procedure.

Once you've decided on your variables, click on "Options...". This will bring up the Options box below, from which you can pick the statistics to generate.

Screenshot of options box: Analyse > Descriptive Statistics > Descriptives

Once you're happy with the variables and statistics to be generated, click "OK". After a short delay the "Viewer" window should open, and in the righthand window should be the results.

If you check the square "Save standardized values as variables" in the dialog box, SPSS will generate one extra column in your dataset for each analysed variable. They will probably be labeled zNameOfYourVariable, whatever NameOfYourVariable happens to be in your case. These contain the z-values for each variable, that is, the value for each number minus the mean and then divided by the standard deviation. If you don't want these values, make sure this is unchecked.


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