TC Technology Knowledge Base

Obtain descriptive statistics in SPSS

Updated on

Descriptive Statistics are brief coefficients that summarize a given dataset. Descriptive statistics are broken down into measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode) and measures of variability (standard deviation, variance).

1. Click the Analyze tab.

2. Choose Descriptive Statistics.

3. Select which descriptive statistics you would like to see. For the purposes of this demonstration, we are going to select Descriptive.

4. A dialogue box will appear for you to choose which variable(s) you would like to see descriptive statistics for.

4.1. You can switch to the variable name by right-clicking on a variable and selecting Display Variable Names. You can also choose to sort the list of variables alphabetically.

4.2. The variable label by default appears in the list of variables.

5. To select age, click on age so it becomes highlighted then click on the right arrow.

6. Age is transferred to the right-hand side column.

7. Next, you can choose different statistically options, style, and bootsrap using the buttons on the right.

8. Click on the options button and then select the descriptive statistics you would like to perform.

For this demonstration, we will look at the mean, standard deviation, minimum, maximum, kurtosis and skewness of the variable age.

9. Click Continue when you have finished your selection.

10. Click OK to run the descriptive statistics.

11. The results will appear in the Output window.

Previous Article Import an Excel File in SPSS
Next Article Create a Histogram in SPSS