DESCRIBING DATA

After you collect information about population by sampling and enter the data into worksheet of SPSS, you should to describe that data to summarize information that you’ve got.

There are several methods to describe data in statistics. Those methods are table of frequency, pie chart, bar chart, stacked bar, histogram, diagram of steam and leaf, and sequential graph. I’ll tell you when you should use each of those methods and tell you how to do that using SPSS.

1. Table of Frequency

It can be used to see frequency of variable that you use in data analysis, whether that variable is numerical or categorical variable. To do it using SPSS, you can follow these steps :

1. On the main menu click ‘analyze’ -> ‘descriptive statistics’ -> ‘frequencies’.

2. Enter variables that you want to know their frequency into ‘variables box’.

3. You will get table of frequency as output.

2. Pie Chart

While the variable that you have is categorical variable, it is a good choice to

describe data using pie chart. To do it using SPSS, you can follow these steps :

1. Click ‘graphs’ -> ‘pie’ -> ‘define’.

2. Enter variable into ‘define slices by’ -> click ‘OK.

If variable that you have is numerical variable, you cannot use pie chart to describe

that data.

3. Bar Chart

Bar chart is used to describe data when the variable is categorical variable. To do it

using SPSS, you can follow these steps :

1. Click ‘graphs’ -> ‘bar’ -> ‘define’.

2. Enter variable into ‘category axis’

3. In ‘bar represent’ you can choose ‘% of cases’ to compare each of categories of that variable -> click ‘OK.

4. Stacked Bar

Stacked bar can be used to examine relationship between two categorical variable.

To do it using SPSS, you can follow these steps :

2. Click ‘graphs’ -> ‘bar’ -> ‘stacked’ -> ‘define’.

3. Enter the first variable into ‘category axis’ and enter second variable into ‘define stacked by’.

4. In ‘bar represent’ you can choose ‘% of cases’ to compare each of categories of that variable -> click ‘OK.

Stacked bar can’t be used to examine significance of relationship between those

variables. If you want to know about significance of relationship between those

variables, you can use crosstab that will be discuss in the next topic.

5. Histogram

Histogram is used to describe numerical data. By using histogram, you can see

mean and standard deviation of data. In histogram, you can also investigate shape

of distribution of that data. To do it using SPSS, you can follow these steps :

1. Click ‘graphs’ -> ‘histogram’.

2. Enter variable into ‘variables’ -> click ‘OK’.