Quantitative survey packet

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Created by Melissa Muñoz & Esmeralda Hernandez Page 1 of 10

SPSS in a nutshell

Quantitative survey packet

What is a scale?

• A scale is something that measures a particular construct or a particular idea o Example: There are scale that try to assess well-being, motivation

o All scales are different based upon their own conception of what the construct is being measured  Example: measuring happiness—how do we define happiness? [operationalization]

• Happiness could be measured based upon how many positive experiences they have in a day, or how many positive thoughts someone may have. There are many different ways to measure this concept

• Scales (constructs) are used to measure the dependent variable (aka what you want to find out for your study)

• We can look at your dependent variable in a variety of different ways using a variety of different scales, this is what makes studies different from one another

• Since we use the psychosociocultural framework for our studies, we further categorize these scales into different theoretical framework constructs

o Example: We group the psychological scales (motivation, self-esteem, etc.), social scales (peers, family, faculty, etc.), and cultural scales (cultural congruity scale, university environment scale, etc) into one concept to measure your dependent variable.

The Quantitative Matrix- organizing scales

• Your matrix is the bread and butter of your quantitative study. It holds all of the information necessary to organize your study. Each line can be filled out by looking up the original information that was located on the article you got the scale from.

• Look at the first 4 boxes of the matrix, these are the scales that you will be using in your study organized by framework construct (the psychological, social, and cultural factors).

• Next to these include the author and year, these are extremely important for you to reference to when gathering scales.

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• As well you see the construct or the WHAT you are looking at for the scale. Usually the name of the scale and the construct are the same however, sometimes they differ.

• If you also look to the right you can see the number of items in the scale, this number is important when you’re making sure you have all the items for the scale.

But wait a second why do we do online survey research in the first place?

Online survey research makes our data collection very easy. Instead of having to input our data manually we just download a bunch of numbers, but how does that work?

Values for what we want to measures are converted to numbers. I.e. if we wanted to convert an answer choice to a number, we would randomly assign a number to the answer choice.

• Example: Let’s say you have a question about someone’s favorite color, with preselected answer choices: o What is your favorite color?

 Blue  Green  Yellow  Orange

o We would need to then create a “codebook” that would make our answer choices convertible to the number spreadsheet we want to create therefore we need to assign appropriate numbers to the qualitative data we have preselected. So let’s try this again…

o What is your favorite color?  Blue = 1

 Green = 2  Yellow = 3  Orange = 4

o So now when you look under the column in your spreadsheet for “favorite color” you will see numerical data in the column instead of “blue” or “green” etc… we do this so when we do the statistics in SPSS, the data will be nice and happy 

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o So now let’s apply it to a study, you can either type out a code book for people to look at OR you could manually keep track of it like the image below. This would include you printing out the entire survey packet and manually writing next to it or typing it up.

Creating your code book: Demographic Sheet

• So now let’s apply it to a study, you can either type out a code book for people to look at OR you could manually keep track of it like the image below. This would include you printing out the entire survey packet and manually writing next to it or typing it up.

• Go through the survey and come up with short hand variable abbreviations for each question. This is mainly complicated on the first page of the demographic sheet. As you create main abbreviations, you need to also numerate the nominal values with a number as you can see in the example above.

o Select One Answer Type of questions:

 For instance, look at the question “marital status”

• The variable abbreviation for the spreadsheet could read “Maritalstatus”

o *note the SPSS does not like spaces, keep the abbreviation to either one word or use the “_” key to separate the words.

o Also assign proper numbers to each selection—single=1, married=2, in a committed relationship=3 etc…

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• If the question has an “other” option, continue to label this value as if it were a regular question. In this case let’s say that there was another option for “maritalstatus”, we would have this option =7.

Creating your code book: Scales is going to be

• Coding your scales is just about 10x’s easier, you simply put the main “code” at the top and number each item accordingly

o Example: for the scale below the scale is “Collective self esteem race specific”  the abbreviation for this will be CSERS.

 You will number each item afterwards and then apply the abbreviation before.  Item 1= CSERS1 Item 2= CSERS2 etc…

Exporting from Survey Gizmo

• Once you have your data from survey gizmo you will click in the upper right corner “export data” then SECOND click the “CSV/Excel (quick)”. This will export your data from survey gizmo

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• Once your spreadsheet is downloaded open it up via Microsoft excel.

Cleaning up your spreadsheet:

• There are two main things that you need to do to initially clean up your spreadsheet. o 1. Fixing the headings

o 2. Fixing the columns

Fixing the headings

• The first thing to do is to make sure that the headings you download match the headings that are on your codebook.

• Typically when you are on survey gizmo you already start naming these variable names while you’re adding your questions, like so:

• However, sometimes the headings that we put here are not exactly how they are on the codebook. So how do we fix this?

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• At the very top row of the excel sheet you have the headers, for this part what you will do is manually make sure that your coding is similar to your code book. If it isn’t manually CHANGE IT!!!!

• But wait up, there are a few question types we need to look at: o Radio Questions (Select One answer)

 These questions you can only select one answer, therefore will only have one column for the responses and a number in the column

• Example: Classlevel, you can only choose from the list that is provided on the sheet.  ** if the question has an “other” option to it and then a Blank space (Other: ____________), or

any other question that might have a format like this such as (multiracial:________________) You will notice that there will be two columns for that question.

• For above we can see “wherelive” and the students will select the appropriate number. If they selected the “other” option and then filled in the blank space, their NORMINAL response (the written response) will be in the column next to it. As you can see for one of the responses there is an “off-campus alone” response when they responded to other.

o Fill in the blank questions

 Some questions will require the participant to fill in their own responses (i.e. age, gpa, etc). If you find a question on the demographic sheet that has them have a free response you will leave this response alone. We are not required do anything extra to the columns.

o Select all that apply questions

 For these questions, you are allowed to select as many answers as you want to for the question.

• Example: Let’s take the question: what school do you belong to? We can have someone that is both in humanities and in the social sciences, so how do we come up with a number for that?

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• For these questions, there are different answers require their own column. If they identify with that school, then we will put a 1 by the response, if they don’t, then we will put nothing (or leave it blank).

• ** Please note for each one of these headers as well, you will need to have an “anchor term” for this instance the anchor was “school_” then you will add the specific heading for that school name. If the school is Bio for instance you can label the column

“School_Bio)” Just make sure it’s on the codebook Fixing the Columns

• Sometimes when we have our data, we MIGHT NOT have changed the variables because we did this:

• Although this might be ok to us, but SPSS has no idea what to do with this data. Soo… what do we do? We press “crtl f” on the keyboard then go to the “replace” tab where we will find the text that says “female” then replace it with a “2”… etc or whatever is written in our codebook.

Importing into SPSS

• Once our data is clean we want to go ahead and import the file to SPSS, so for this we will save the file as an “excel workbook” then import it into SPSS.

• Open up the program then go to “file” then “open” then select “data”. At the bottom for file type select the “.xls” option then find the file.

• When you do this another screen will pop up, simply press continue. Then BAM your data is entered!!

Adding values to your scales

• This will include adding values to all of your scales manually. It’s mainly a pain for demographic sheet, the rest of your scales should be fine.

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• First look at the name of the question you want to do.

• Example: Marital Status

o To assign a value click on the box under values

o For each numerical value put it in the top box where it says “value”, next for the “label” type in

whatever nominal value you have for that question. Please refer to your codebook. You will need to do this manually for each question.

• ** Adding values to the demographic sheet is easy** Look at your codebook and see what nominal values were added to your scales. This should either be on your matrix or in your codebook.

o Typically it will be something like Strongly disagree=1, Disagree=2, Agree=3, and Strongly Agree=4 o You will not need to do this for each item, you can always click on the “value” box for that item then

paste it to the value box below. You can also select multiple value boxes at once by holding down the “ctrl shift down arrow button” keys.

Once you have finished all of this you are finished cleaning up your data!!!!! (For input)

Syntax

What is Syntax?

• Every operation done in SPSS has its own formula and code. The syntax is documented evidence of the statistics you performed on your data.

• Syntax is an SPSS record of all of the operations you perform on your data. Your syntax will have several sections o Recodes

o Reliabilities o Compute 80s o Analysies

• Each section should be separated by a title. Examples are as follows

o *****************************Recodes**************************** o *****************************Reliabilities****************************

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• Once the operation has been run then put a “*” in front of it to tell yourself you have ran that operation

Recoding

So your data is clean! Now what?

What is recoding and why is it important?

• When scales attempt to measure something they use items (a series of questions). The following is an example of items that may be used to measure how much somebody likes or dislikes McDonalds food: Choose the number that best applies to the statement 1-Strongly Disagree, 2-Disagree, 3-Neutral, 4-Agree, 5-Strongly Agree

1. BigMacs are delicious 2. Happy Meals make my day

3. Filet o’ fish burgers make me say “YUM”

• These are all possible items. However you may also want to ask a question that is asked in an opposite manner. For example the next item might say:

4. Fuck French Fries from McDonalds

• The position of the statement/question may change but the answer options stay the same. A person who loves McDonalds would say “5-strongly agree” for items 1, 2, and 3, but would probably strongly disagree with the 4th

item.

• While in most questions Strongly disagree means they don’t like McDonalds, and strongly Agree means they love McDonalds, on the fourth item it means the opposite. Item number 4 would therefore be a recoded item.

• SSPS needs to know this before you run your data!! Otherwise your reliability will not exceed the necessary number (.7)

Recoding Data on SPSS

1. BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING! “Save As” your “Raw Data” and title it “Recoded Data”

2. Your matrix is your BEST FRIEND! It should have a column that has the number of the items that were recoded. If you don’t have this you need it! That means going through each item and asking yourself whether it is recoded or not.

3. Using the list on your matrix go to the tab “Transform” then “Recode” making sure to “Recode to same variables”

4. A window will pop up listing all of your items. Find the item that corresponds to the scale and items on your matrix. Highlight the item and move it to the “Numeric Variables” box.

5. Once all of your variables are in the box click “Old and New Values” Another box will appear.

6. Enter the old value in the first box. For example: in the example above 1 meant strongly disagree, and a 2 meant agree etc.

7. For the new value you will be switching the numbers so that the recoded item matches the other items. For example “Strongly disagree” really means “Strongly agree” for item 4 above. Therefore number 1 will actually be 5. Your new value should then be 5.

8. Click “Add” and the old and new values will appear in the box next to it. o When you enter your values it should look as follows:

 1->5  2->4  3->3  4->2

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Created by Melissa Muñoz & Esmeralda Hernandez Page 10 of 10  5->1

o Click “Paste” and this should record your recode to your Syntax

Reliabilities

• Reliability refers to the consistency of a measure. A measure is said to have a high reliability if it produces consistent results under consistent conditions.

Running reliability tests on SPSS

1. Click on the “Analysis” tab and go down to “Scale” then click on “Reliability Analysis”

2. A window will pop up. Move every item of the first scale into the box to the right labeled Items. Scales will be inputted one by one!

3. Repeat for every scale

4. Press “paste” to send it to your Syntax

5. Run the operation on Syntax with the “Play” button then put a “*” in front of it to tell yourself you have ran that operation