Data View, which is as shown above. The data view worksheet works just like a spreadsheet, where a column represents a variable and a row represents a case or an observation. Many tasks in SPSS are performed by selecting appropriate “Pull-down” menus. Cells in the data view contain data values. They do not contain formulas as in some spreadsheet programs. Watch the following movie clip to learn how to access the Data View and various ways of reading data.

Variable View window: Click on 'Variable View' shown at the bottom of the Data Editor, The variable view contains descriptions of each variable attributes in the data file. The rows contain the variables and the columns contain the variable attributes. Variables can be deleted and the variable attributes can be modified. Note that defining variable properties in variable view can also be accomplished by using “Define Variable Properties” that is available on the Data menu in the Data Editor Window. Watch the following movie clip to learn how to use Variable View to edit variable attributes.

File: To open an existing file, to read data (from a text data file or from an application [like Excel] data file) into Data Editor window, to save a data file, and to exit SPSS for Windows. The following movie clip demonstrates how to use some of the menu items in File Menu for reading various types of data

Edit: To make changes like copy, cut or paste to the Data Editor window.  These functions work just like a spreadsheet.

Data: To define variables, insert variables or cases, sort cases, merge files, split files, select cases and use a variable to weight cases. The following two clips demonstrate how to use the some of the menu items in the Data Menu for sorting, merging and transposing data sets and for selecting subset of cases and splitting files by variables.

MOVIE: Data Manipulation-Sort, Merge, Transpose 
MOVIE: File Manipulation; select, split
 

Transform: SPSS can easily create new variables through variable transformation or recoding the data values of an existing variable. The following clip demonstrates how to compute a new transformed variable, recode data values of an existing variable into a different variable or into the same variable.

MOVIE: Transformation of variables
 

Analyze: SPSS provides an extensive list of statistical techniques for data analysis. In a separate page, Statistical Techniques, we discuss many of these statistical techniques in details. The following clip introduces the Analyze Menu and the basic sub-dialog common in any statistical technique.

MOVIE: Statistical Procedures
 

Graphs: To obtain high resolution plots and graphs, which can be edited in Chart Editor window. SPSS provides various commonly used high resolution statistical graphs. Go to Graphs Menu to choose the graphs that fits your need and follow the dialog box to create your statistical graphs.
 

Utilities: To run script and to display information on the contents of SPSS data files.
 

Add-Ons: SPSS provides many other analytical techniques that are sold separately. If your institution/company purchases some of these additional add-on modules, you can run these techniques through the Add-Ons Menu. In this workshop, we will demonstrate one of the menu items in the Utility Menu: the Programmability Extension. Programmability Extension allows users to integrate the R program into SPSS. This function is available in SPSS 16.0 and latter versions. The following movie clip demonstrates how to integrate R codes into SPSS.

Window: To move to an open window or to see which window is active.  The window with a check mark is the active one.
 

Help: To get help on topics in SPSS and to ask the statistics coach some questions. This is a very powerful tool. If you can not find enough information in the web workshop, you may be able to find them in the Help system.