Psychology 381 – Paper 3

Entering data into SPSS

  1. Create participant number. Number all of your questionnaires in the top right corner (e.g., 1 through 20 if your study has 20 Ps).
  2. Open SPSS. The Data editor will be blank:

var / Var / var / var
1
2
3
  1. Define variables. Either double click on “var” in the first column. Type in the variable name. I suggest “pnum” for participant number. Note, keep variable names to 8 characters or less. Click on the LABELS box and type in the words “participant number.” Click on continue, then okay.

Click on the next “var.” Type in your next variable. Enter your first independent variable. Click on the LABELS box and type in a label (e.g., gender). Next, let’s label the levels of gender (i.e., male, female). Type the number “1” in the “value” line and the word “male” directly below. Click ADD. Type “2” in the “value” line and “female” below. Click ADD. Click continue, then okay.

Repeat this pattern, creating variable names and labels for IV no.2, and your DV. The editor will now look like this (given a 2 (gender) x 2(no. of bystanders) design with helping as the DV):

pnum / gender / bystand / help
1
2
3

4. Enter the data. Each row represents a participant. Grab participant no.1. Starting in row 1, enter “1” in the Pnum column. Next, determine which level this P was assigned to for each of your IVs. In the gender column, enter 1 if the P is male and 2 if the P is female. In the bystander column, enter 1 if the P was in the high-no-of-bystanders condition, and 2 if in the control condition. In the help column (your DV), enter the P’s score.

Continue this pattern for participant no.2, 3, etc…

pnum / gender / bystand / help
1 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 5
2 / 2 / 2 / 1 / 7
3 / 3 / 2 / 2 / 8

5. Analyze the data. Choose ANALYZE / GENERAL LINEAR MODEL / UNIVARIATE. Type in your DV in the DV box, and put both IVs into the box titled “fixed factors.” Choose OPTIONS and click on the descriptive statistics box. Choose continue and okay. The results will appear in the output window. You will have three boxes that look like this:

Look at the Table 3, tests of between-subjects effects. Follow the gender column to the F and p values. This is the main effect (ME) for gender (and here the p value beats our α = .05, so we have significance). The next row is the second ME for number of bystanders. This is also highly significant. The next row is the interaction. It is significant, but we need to create a graph and look at the means to see if the interaction is happening the way we planned it to happen…

  1. Create a Graph in SPSS, export to wordprocessor. Choose GRAPHS / BAR. Then choose CLUSTERED. Click on the radio button in front of “other summary function” and type in your DV in the variable box. Type in one of your IVs in the “category axis” and the other IV in “define clusters by.” Choose okay.

In order to paste this graph into your word processor program, click on the graph and choose EDIT / COPY OBJECTS. Then in Microsoft Word, choose EDIT / PASTE. You may need to play with the image (resize). Also, you may need to click on the image and choose FORMAT / PICTURE in order to have the image rest properly within your article.