Basic data operations in SPSS - ISS - University of Leeds

Basic data operations in SPSS for Windows 17
Version 6 (November 2009)
Figure 10: The result of the count operation
The variable spending, added to the end of the list of variables, contains the appropriate count (width and
decimal places have been changed to 1 and 0 respectively using the Variable View window since the value of
spending is a number in the range 0 to 7). If required, value labels may be defined for spending using the
Variable View window.
We can examine the distribution of values of the variable spending using Frequencies or Graph. The results
are shown in Figure 11. The list of frequencies reveals that only 0.5% of those surveyed feel that spending is
‘About Right’ in all of the areas of Government spending.
Figure 11: Frequency distribution and bar chart for spending
Figure 12 shows the SPSS commands used to perform the transformation.
COUNT spending = natenvir natheal natcrime natdrug nateduc
natdef natmass (2) .
VARIABLE LABELS
spending 'Satisfaction with Government Spending' .
EXECUTE .
Figure 12: COUNT command
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