This Pass or Prepared? is brought to you, courtesy of the Social Science Research Institute Council, from their Workshop on Wednesday, June 14, 2000. SSRIC offers a Hypertext Version of their own text on SPSS by Richard Shaffer, Edward Nelson, Nan Chico, John Korey, Elizabeth Nelson, and James Ross. ISBN: 0-07-241445-6 This text is available on the Web, and in hardcopy from the bookstore.

These SPSS Pass? or Prepared?s also follow the Dowdall, Logio, Babbie, and Halley, text: Adventures in Criminal Justice Research, for SPSS Versions 7.5, 8.0, or Higher. ISBN: 0-7619-8625-1 This text is available from the bookstore.

To run SPSS you must have access to the SPSS program, which is licensed to the school. To run it on your home computer you need a special student version which is not free. For that reason, we offer you alternative exercises on SDA, which is free to use anywhere you have access to the Internet. Some familiarity with SPSS is an important skill to acquire.

Let's try it.

• First, with this exercise up, press the START button, select Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, or whichever browser you prefer . You should now have two browser windows available, the second of which is active. In that second window link to this URL: http://www.csubak.edu/ssric/Modules/SPSS/SPSFirst.htm, the SSRIC Online text for SPSS.

  Then, with The SSRIC Text still on the screen, Press the START button, select Programs, and select SPSS. Open the file: justice.sav

  Switching Screens with the Task Bar

  Now you should have three buttons on your task bar at the very bottom of the screen. Leftmost should be the Pass? or Prepared? with instructions and questions. In the middle should be the SSRIC text on SPSS, and on the rightmost should be the SPSS program with the justice.sav file. You may transfer the justice.sav file to your computer from any FTP program or from a disk. Ask jeanne for help. You can move back and forth between these three screens just by clicking your mouse on the proper button. Try it, until you are comfortable with moving back and forth.

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  Looking at the Data Matrix

  Just about halfway down the first file on the SSRIC text, you will find a data matrix. They used the gss.sav file. We will look at that later. For now let's see what we can tell about the justice.sav file.

  Click on any question number to see jeanne's answer to that question.

  1. What is evident from a first glance at the table?

  2. Can you make a best guess at what some of the numbers mean, just by looking at the table?

  3. Touch your mouse very gently to the word "violent". Hold the mouse very still. Do NOT click! A "yellow tip" should appear on your screen just below the mouse with the words "Number of Violent Crimes". Now what do you suppose the number means in the "Violent Column"?

  4. Is there a fairly equal distribution of the sample over the liberal/conservative spectrum? Or, put another way, are liberals and conservatives pretty much balanced in California?

  5. What does that say about the frequency distribution of liberals and conservatives?

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  Figurine by Rudiger Appel. Notice that you can see three effects in the animation. Either the Variation on the Kandinsky figurine appears to turn in a clockwise direction, or in a counterclockwise direction, or it appears to open and close. Can you see all three effects? Try. Fascinated? Link to Appel's site and then link to the background he provides. Scroll down until you find a link to background.

Copright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata, June 2000. "Fair Use" encouraged.