Step 1: Start the SPSS program.

Do this by double clicking the SPSS icon at the bottom of the computer screen.

When the program starts it should open up an empty data window. If at this point you wanted to open an existing datafile, you'd go to the file menu and open the file. However for this part of the exercise we want to create a new datafile, so the empty data window is what we want.

Now you want to take a look at the data that you'll be entering. You need to identify the cases (to go into the rows of the data files) and the variables (to go into the columns).

ID#01 Name: Joe Hart Age: 25 Gender: Male Income: $23,000 IQ: 105	ID#: 02 Name: Mary Swanson Age: 37 Gender: Female Income: $41,000 IQ: 115	ID#: 03 Name: Sam Lewis Age: 61 Gender: Male Income: ? IQ: 125
ID#: 04 Name: Chin Lee Age: 32 Gender: Male Income: $36,000 IQ: 140	ID#: 05 Name: Al Walton Age: 39 Gender: Male Income: $29,000 IQ: 95	ID#: 06 Sara Smith Age: 27 Gender: Female Income: $18,000 IQ: 90
ID#: 07 David Dodge Age: 34 Gender: Male Income: $29,000 IQ: 115	ID#: 08 Michelle Friedlander Age: 38 Gender: Female Income: $22,000 IQ: 105

To create the datafile you'll need to think about all of these questions. For this exercise your file will need to contain the following:

• 8 cases of data completely entered (leave cell blank if data are missing)
• 6 clearly titled variables
• variable labels for all variables
• value labels for "gender"
• "name" should be a string variable

Step 3: Entering the data

After considering the data, identifying the cases and the variables you're ready to start entering data into your SPSS data file. Format and name 6 columns, one for each variable and then enter the data from the table above. If you need help formating and naming the variables check the spss basics tutorial.

Step 4: Manipulating the data

After you have entered the data try to sort the datafile by income.

Step 5: Graphing the data

Now try graphing some of the data.
• Make a scatterplot of the relationship between income and age.
• Make a histogram of income.
• Make a bar graph plotting income by gender (one bar for males, one bar for females).

Step 6: Simple descriptive analyses

• Compute the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation of age.