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Preface

One of the most popular statistical programs of all times, IBM® SPSS® Statistics^* (which originally stood for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), is a result of the project started in 1968 at Stanford University, California. As a result of its immense popularity, it is not surprising to find many SPSS textbooks being published. Most of these books are voluminous because they combine SPSS with statistics. The need to teach introductory courses in statistics, with a basic knowledge of SPSS, at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, however, called for an abridged version of a textbook.

To achieve this purpose, we refrained from explaining statistical theory almost completely and focused on the commands within the main menus of SPSS instead. The Dutch manuscript was first introduced in 2002 and adapted based on the teaching experiences as we progressed. The end result was this textbook, which helps students understand SPSS, and more important, to work with it. After reading and working with SPSS’s commands, students are able to modify and analyze data with the most common SPSS tools available.

Though all figures and instructions in this book are based on SPSS versions 20 to 22, the users of SPSS version 18 or 19 may not find much difficulty in using it either.

This book is targeted to the audience who are novice users in SPSS. We use clear-cut examples from real scientific research, while the reader is invited to replicate the findings as he proceeds. The relevant outcomes included may be used as a reference. Extra assignments are provided at the end of each chapter that can be worked out by the students themselves, without much external guidance, to enhance the effect of learning.

Manfred te Grotenhuis & Anneke Matthijssen

Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands

^* SPSS is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.