SPSS Windows Step by Step: A Simple Guide and Reference

Darren George and Paul Mallery made a very good, exact book that really works as an introduction to SPSS. Those last versions For Windows of the SPSS software are excellent, sound and solid - and to write a book about that was not a very hard work. But the complexity of the program can be a disturbing burden to the beginner, believe me. The worst problem here is not related to the Windows commands explanations but with the lack of explanation of those intrincate OUTPUTS you get from some of the SPSS macros. Maybe in a future edition some attention will be given to that VERY important "detail". It would turn that good book in an excellent book !

After spending more than 5000 hours (along with Paul Mallery, my co-author) to write the book, I now take a few moments for a note of a more personal nature. First, the book listed here is the 2nd edition (SPSS version 9.0). the 3rd edition has recently been released (on SPSS 10.0), and Allyn & Bacon (the publisher) also has our book (the 1st edition) for SPSS version 7.5.The most recent edition contains 28 chapters. The comment by the gentleman from Louisiana reflects the many e-mails we have received on this book from, literally, all over the world. Paul and I have gone to excruciating efforts, particularly on the first 16 chapters, to create a tool that makes SPSS absolutely clear to the beginner. While we routinely recommend that anyone who uses the book first take a course in statistics, for anyone with reasonable math aptitude, the first 16 chapters should be understandable without ANY statistical background. In the final 12 chapter our book explores more complex statistical procedures (log-linear models, factor analysis, discriminant analysis, multi-dimensional scaling, and others) in the identical format as the earlier chapters. If you are looking for a book that is comprehensive yet ultimately understandable for fundamental statistical procedures (data entry, data manipulation, frequencies, descriptives, chi-squares, t-tests, correlations, ANOVAs, simple linear and multiple regression analysis, graphs) but includes excellent coverage on the more advanced procedures we suggest that this book was made for you.We, the authors, welcome your comments. Many reader comments have been incorporated in new editions of the book.Darren George

This book has proven to be both an excellent tutorial and reference for not only SPSS but also statistics in general. The step-by-steps are easy to follow--even for the a novice computer user. Each chapter also provides a brief summary of when that statistical proceedure is appropriate which is quite useful. In addition, each chapter's "Output" section tell you which of SPSS's abundant output is most important during interpretation. These "Output" sections also provide a brief list of defined term that are displayed on the SPSS output. The definition of these terms are quite easy to understand and will often include a clarification of values for that term. This is a reference manual I carry with me at all times and I strongly recommend it for anyone who has less than expert knowledge in either SPSS or data analysis in general.