The exercises are an integral part of the course, designed to give you confidence in using SPSS. So please do not skip over them. These exercises relate to the topics of the first half of the course: Loading Data, Descriptive Statistics, Frequencies and Crosstabs.
To complete the exercises on this page, you will need to download and save to your computer:
bristol.xslx (an Excel file)
Note that this file contains data relating to voyages in the slave trade that originated in the port of Bristol. The format is the same as the file used for the case study, but the answers will be different.
Importing an Excel File
- Go to File | Open | Data.
- Import the Excel file Bristol.xlsx.
Descriptives
- Use Analyse | Descriptive Statistics | Descriptives to calculate the mean and standard deviation of the number of slaves imported by Bristol ships.
- Set the missing value of the ‘number’ variable to 999.
- Repeat the Descriptives command to determine the new mean and standard deviation. What is the difference? Why is it there?
Frequencies
- Use Analyse | Descriptive Statistics | Frequencies to determine the main location of the embarkation of slaves (variable majbyimp).
- Set the missing variable for majbyimp to a blank space ‘ ‘.
- Reanalyse the data. What differences are there?
Crosstabs
- Use Analyse | Descriptive Statistics | Crosstabs to compare the places of embarkation and disembarkation. The two variables are majbyimp and mjselimp.
- Which was the main embarkation place, and which the major disembarkation place?
Save
- Use File | Save As to save the datasheet as project1.sav
Durham SPSS 