SPSS stands for Statistical Package for Social
Science
It is a software program that is used and gives near
to equal importance for both Qualitative and Quantitative Data sets. It is very
popular among academicians across the globe and widely used for statistical
analysis of quantitative data sets mainly due to the growing uses of the quantitative
methods for the validation of their analysis. Many other statistical software are
available for the research purposes. Some of these are- Stata, Minitab, DataMelt,
Scilab, STATWING, etc. Despite the availability of mentioned software, SPSS has
a user-friendly interface and easier to handle large volumes of data, especially
for beginners. Also, the researchers can take help from the range of tutorials,
available on different e-resources to cater to their specific needs.
By using SPSS,
the researcher can-
·
Convert
people’s action and views (questionnaire) to an analytical form,
·
Collect,
Organize and Transform data,
·
Perform statistical
tests such as ANOVA (Analysis of Variance), t-test, f-test
for data validation,
·
Obtain data output
in the various forms of Tables, Charts and Graphs, and
· Export results’ analysis or output into different
file formats like- word, pdf, excel, etc.
As IBM reserves the copyright of SPSS software and
the full version is not available for free in the public domain. But the researchers/users
can use the trial version of SPSS for a specific period of time or they can part
in institutional subscription (usually, available in the libraries of the Universities).
Now, it is clear that SPSS is a very useful and important
tool for conducting the researches in Social Sciences. The importance of SPSS can
be evaluated by observing it’s uses in Nation-wide Surveys (Census, SECC),
Elections, Health care, Education, Marketing, etc.