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SPSS v12
Using SPSS
Exercises

Document No. IS-077 v4

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SPSS course. Exercises

Contents
SPSS course exercises.......................................................................................1
Exercise 1: Defining variables and entering data.............................................1
Exercise 3: Missing data....................................................................................2
Exercise 4: Importing an Excel file..................................................................3
Exercise 5: Sort Cases and Select Cases...........................................................3
Exercise 6: Recoding variables..........................................................................3
Exercise 7: Computing variables.......................................................................4
Exercise 8: Creating and saving output............................................................4
Exercise 9: Frequencies command....................................................................5
Exercise 10: Descriptives command..................................................................5
Exercise 11: Crosstabulations command...........................................................5
Exercise 12: Means command...........................................................................6
Exercise 13: T Tests...........................................................................................6
Exercise 14: Correlation....................................................................................6
Exercise 15: Regression....................................................................................7
Exercise 16: Graphical plots..............................................................................7

UCL Information Systems

SPSS course. Exercises

SPSS course. Exercises

UCL Information Systems

SPSS course exercises

The following exercises form part of the Using SPSS course. Refer to the
relevant section in the course notes before performing each exercise.
Location of data files: r:\training.dir\spss
Please save/load all your work in this folder during the training session

Exercise 1: Defining variables and entering data

You are responsible for collecting data from a clinical trial of Drug X. Drug X is
postulated to affect blood levels of a certain hormone (hormone H), so levels of
the hormone will be measured before and after treatment with X. In addition to
the hormone data, five other pieces of information will be collected from each
participant in the trial.
1. Switch to the Variable View and define the seven variables listed in the
table below. Use numeric variables in SPSS for categorical data.
Variable name
Surname
Gender
Age
Income
Smoker

Data type
Categorical (categories are Female and Male)
Continuous
Continuous
Categorical (categories are Smoker and Nonsmoker)
Continuous
Continuous

Hbefore
Hafter

2. The table below shows the data which you have collected from five
patients who took part in a pilot study for the clinical trial. Switch to the
Data Editor and enter the data on these five patients. Remember to use
numeric codes where necessary.
Surname
ROBBINS

Gender
Female

Age
32

Income
46000

MCGREG
OR
KUMAR

Male

33

58000

Male

38

47000

ALLINSO
N-HENRY
OLDER

Female

51

55000

Male

44

28000

Smoker
Nonsmoker
Nonsmoker
Smoker

Hbefore
94.58

Hafter
88.79

106.12

78.25

88.11

Nonsmoker
Nonsmoker

83.62

102.4
5
63.82

72.31

77.50

Save the data as pilotgroup.sav.

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SPSS course. Exercises

Exercise 2: Variable and value labels

Open the data file medicaltrialX.sav in SPSS.
1. Create the following labels for the variables:
income

Household income

smoker

Smoker or non-smoker

hbefore

Blood levels of H before treatment

hafter

Blood levels of H after treatment

2. Create the following value labels for the gender variable:

1 = Female

2 = Male

3. Save the file with the new definitions.

Exercise 3: Missing data

Some of the data in medicaltrialX.sav contains missing values.
1. Inspect the data in your data sheet and spot any missing values. Take
note of which variables have missing values.
2. For each of the variables identified above, decide on an appropriate
coding for missing values. For example, for a numeric variable which
cannot be negative, -1 might be used. For text data, an X might be used.
3. In Variable View, specify missing values for each variable identified in
paragraph 1. above.
4. After specifying the missing values, return to the Data Editor and change
any blank cells to the appropriate missing value code.
5. Run the Frequencies command which shows that the missing values have
been coded. (Hint: Use the menu option Analyse | Descriptive statistics |
Frequencies, move all the variables into the right-hand box, then click
OK.)
6. Close the output window (do not save the output). Save the changed data
file, giving it the new name fixed.sav .

Exercise 4: Importing an Excel file

1. Start a new, blank data sheet.
2. Import the file results.xls into SPSS, using the column headings as variable
names.
3. Switch to Variable View. Add a new variable called SEN, and give it the
label Special Educational Needs.
4. The SEX variable (as in an earlier exercise) uses values of 1 and 2 to
indicate Female and Male respectively. Enter the value labels for the
SEX variable.
5. Save the file to results2.sav.

SPSS course. Exercises

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Exercise 5: Sort Cases and Select Cases

Load the data file medicaltrialX.sav.
1. Sort the data in order of age (oldest first).
2. Sort the file in order of smoker within gender (i.e. gender is the primary
ordering).
3. Select all the males in the group.
4. Select all cases again.
5. Now select the patients whose hormone levels were greater after the
treatment than they were before.
There is no need to save the data file at this point.
If you have extra time, see if you can select all the smokers.

Exercise 6: Recoding variables

Helpful hint:
If you still have a subset of the cases selected (from the previous exercise), make sure you select all cases
before you proceed.

We need to recode some of the data in medicaltrialX.sav (or fixed.sav). The information
in the smoker column is coded as text (Y and N). It would be better to code it as
numeric data (e.g. 1 and 0), and to use labels to indicate the meaning of these
numbers.
1. Use Recode to convert the smoker information into a new variable called
smoker1, so that 'Y' becomes 1 and 'N' becomes 0. (Define the label for
this new variable as "Smoker or non-smoker")
2. Create value labels for the smoker1 variable so that 1 is displayed as
'Smoker', and 0 is displayed as 'Non-smoker'.
3. Check that the recode has worked properly. If it has, then delete the old
variable smoker from your data sheet.
4. Using Recode, create a new variable incband (with label "Income band")
to categorise the household income: up to $25,000 as band 1, between
$25,000 and $40,000 as band 2, and more than $40,000 as band 3.
5. Save the data file if you are happy with the results of this exercise.

Exercise 7: Computing variables

Open the data file results.sav created in Exercise 2. This shows the exam scores
for a class of high-school students.
1. Each student has a percentage mark for Maths, English, and History.
Compute a new variable, named total, to calculate their total score out of
300.

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SPSS course. Exercises

2. We wish to compute the average (mean) mark over the three tests for
each student. Compute a new variable, average, calculating this
information.
3. Save the file.

Exercise 8: Creating and saving output

This exercise uses the file results.sav created in Exercise 2.
1. Use the Case Summaries command to produce a listing of your data.
2. Save the SPSS output in a file called result1.spo.
3. Produce a printout of the SPSS Viewer window. (Or use Print preview if
you don't have access to a printer.)

SPSS course. Exercises

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Exercise 9: Frequencies command

This exercise uses the medicaltrialX data, and the incband variable as calculated
earlier. If you do not have this, you can load the data file medicaltrialX-part2.sav.
1. Create a Frequencies command with a bar chart to find the following:
The numbers within each of the three incband
classifications.
How many subjects are male, and how many female.
2. Create a Frequencies command for the two hormone level variables (i.e.
hbefore and hafter). Include the following in the output:
Do not display the actual frequency tables.
A histogram with a normal curve superimposed for
each variable.
Produce values for the mean, mode and median.
Objects from the SPSS Viewer can be copied and pasted into other applications
(e.g. Microsoft Word or Excel). If you have time, open a new document in
Microsoft Word. Copy and paste one of the histograms which you have just
produced into the Word document. Save it with the title histogram.doc. Do not save
the SPSS Viewer output.

Exercise 10: Descriptives command

Use the medicaltrialX data you have been working on or you may wish to load the
data file medicaltrialX-part2.sav.
1. Use the Descriptives command to display the default information for age
and income.
How old is the oldest participant?
And the youngest?
What is the average household income of the
participants?
2. Produce a Descriptives command for the variables hbefore and hafter.
This time use the Options to include the skewness and range in the
output.
Which of the two measurements has the largest
range of readings? What is the range?
Use the Help menu to find out what skewness means.
Using this information, which of the two
measurements do you think is closest to being
normally distributed? Explain why.

Exercise 11: Crosstabulations command

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SPSS course. Exercises

This exercise uses the incband column as defined earlier. If you do not have this
variable in your data, you can load the data file medicaltrialX-part2.sav.
1. Run a Crosstabs command for the variables incband and gender,
including the following information:
Each cell of the table should list the observed values,
the expected values, and the unstandardised
residuals.
Also run the chi-square test.
2. Run a second Crosstabs command for the same variables. This time do
not run the chi-square test, but include the following within each cell of
the table:
The row, column and total percentages.

Exercise 12: Means command

Use the medicaltrialX data you have been working on or you may wish to load the
data file medicaltrialX-part2.sav.
1. Build a Means command where the dependent variables are the two sets
of hormone level measurements (i.e. hbefore and hafter) and the
independent variable is incband. Answer the following questions:
Which group achieves the highest average hormone
level, and is this before or after treatment?
Which group has the lowest mean hormone level
before the treatment?
Which group shows the most varied hormone levels
before the treatment? And after? (Hint: look at the
standard deviations.)
2. Build a similar means command as the previous one. This time make
gender the independent variable. Answer the following question:
Which gender showed the largest increase in blood
hormone levels, on average?
3. Build another Means command which will again analyse the results for
each subject, but this time looking at the results for each gender within
each incband group. (Hint: enter one category variable in the
independent list and click on the Next button before inserting the second
category variable.)
Which group of men show the highest mean level of
H before treatment? What is that mean level?
In the highest income category, which gender shows
the highest mean level of H after treatment?

Exercise 13: T Tests

SPSS course. Exercises

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Use the medicaltrialX data you have been working on - or you may wish to load the
data file medicaltrialX-part2.sav.
1. Perform a T Test to show whether there is a significant difference in the
inital hormone levels (hbefore) between men and women. Is there?
2. Perform a T Test across all the cases, to decide whether there is a
significant difference in the mean hormone concentrations before and
after the treatment.
3. Now use the Select cases function to select only the women in the study,
and repeat step (2). What do you find?
If you have time, repeat the test, selecting men instead of women.

Exercise 14: Correlation

Before we test for correlations, we need to calculate a new variable. Refer to
the Computing new data section in the course workbook if you need to. Use the
medicaltrialX data you have been working on or you may wish to load the data
file medicaltrialX-part2.sav.
1. We need to calculate the change in blood levels of hormone H using the
two values we already have (the blood levels before and after). Create a
new variable dh using the Compute function to calculate the "after" level
minus the "before" level.
Now to perform the correlations.

2. Measure the strength of association between income and age with a

correlation coefficient and its significance.
3. Measure the strength of association between age and dh with a
correlation coefficient and its significance.
4. Produce a scatter plot of dh against age (placing dh on the vertical axis),
and:
Include a title.
Produce a fit line on the graph (Hint: Double-click on
the chart to edit it, then click on one of the data
points to select the data points, and from the menus
choose Chart | Add chart element | Fit line at
total).

Exercise 15: Regression

Use the medicaltrialX data you have been working on or you may wish to load the
data file medicaltrialX-part2.sav.
Perform a linear regression analysis, analysing the dependence of dh upon age
(i.e. the same variables as in the previous exercise), drawing some conclusions
about the regression line produced.

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SPSS course. Exercises

Exercise 16: Graphical plots

Use the medicaltrialX data you have been working on or you may wish to load the
data file medicaltrialX-part2.sav.
1. Produce a pie chart showing the number of people that fall into each of
the three income bands.
Include a title in the output.
Produce labels for the frequency of each income band
and the percentage of the population.
2. Produce a clustered bar chart summarising the mean "before" and "after"
measurements separately, for men and for women (hint: gender is the
category variable).

SPSS course. Exercises

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