ONE-DAY WORKSHOPS:

• WRITING AND USING SPSS SYNTAX

• WRITING AND USING SPSS MACROS AND OMS

JULY 2009: MANCHESTER, UK

ASSESS is an independent user group for SPSS, a computer package for analysing and presenting data. It is run by users, for users and is completely independent of manufacturers of the software. Between 1996 and 2008 ASSESS gave workshops on aspects of SPSS including syntax, macros, output management system (OMS) and Python.

Two one day workshops are provisionally planned to be held in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Manchester, Sackville Street, Manchester  on 1st & 2nd July 2009 led by Chris Stride (University of Sheffield) and Peter Watson (MRC, Cambridge). These will cover SPSS syntax, macros and the output management system (OMS).

The workshops are open to users of SPSS who are familiar with the menu toolbar but have limited knowledge of syntax. Below are details of the provisional agendas for one-day syntax workshop and for the macros and OMS one day workshop

Both days will be taught in an interactive hand-on workshop-style format, with frequent examples and exercises for participants to work through. A full set of notes and exercise solutions will also be given to all who attend. If participants have SPSS-related queries relating to their own data which they wish to explore, both tutors will be willing to (at least attempt to!) answer these at the end of each day.

• Dr Chris Stride is the statistician at the Institute of Work Psychology, University of Sheffield, and has over a decade of experience teaching both statistics and SPSS to non-statisticians.
• Dr Peter Watson is a statistician at the MRC Cognition and Brain Science Unit in Cambridge, has been teaching SPSS for non-statisticians for 15 years and has given three talks to the SPSS users group.

Chris and Peter led one day SPSS workshops at the Universities of Birmingham, Sheffield and Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge in 2007-2008.

Each day will run from approximately 9-45am to 4-45pm. The booking fee includes mid-morning coffee, buffet lunch and afternoon tea each day but not overnight accommodation. Further details will be sent out to delegates upon receipt of booking forms. The booking form is available in pdf format and in word format. Please email us any interest or suggestions for other workshops or if you have any problems with the form.

Provisional Agenda for one-day syntax workshop:

SYNTAX TOPICS

• Starting with syntax
  • why use SPSS syntax, writing and running syntax; determining when  your command runs
• Some simple SPSS commands
• opening and saving files, describing data via frequencies, descriptives and crosstabs
• Reading data into SPSS from other formats
  • handling text format, Excel format data
  • defining and documenting data
  • variable names, variable labels, value labels, missing value, formatting data
• Creating new variables
  • recoding, computing, count, performing calculations on subsets via DO IF - END IF, making multiple calculations using DO REPEAT loops
• Manipulating cases
  • selecting subsets of data for analysis, filtering files, splitting files, sorting cases
• Manipulating files
  • aggregating files, restructuring files, matching files, adding cases, updating files
• Data Management: a worked example
  • best practice for creating and managing a complex data set

Provisional Agenda for one-day macros & OMS workshop:

MACRO TOPICS

• What is a Macro?
• Creating and running a macro
  • calling a macro
  • inputting values into a macro
• Loops
  • !DO !DOEND
• Conditional structures
  • !IF !IFEND
• Nesting macros inside other macros
• Including macros from external files
  • INCLUDE
• Macros which are available on the web

OUTPUT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (OMS) TOPICS

• What is the Output Management System (OMS)?
• OMS syntax commands
  • specifying pivot tables
  • outputting tabular information to a SPSS data file
  • creating richer tables with SPLIT FILE
• Pivot trays
  • what are they and how do we access them?
  • incorporating pivot tray diagnostics into OMS
• Combining SPSS tabular output with existing data files
  • use with MATCH FILES