Lab 1: Introduction and Data Collection

Administrative Details

Homework from the prior assignment must be turned in at the start of the current Lab.

No Late work is accepted. You have one week to appeal lab grades. You can attend office hours for any TA but

direct questions about the paper to me. I will grade your final project.

Today’s Activities

Entering and Saving Data with SPSS

Survey #1: Brief Personality Inventory – Must put PID on Scantron

Survey #2: Longer Survey – Must NOT put PID on Scantron

Homework Exercise #1

Enter and Save Data with SPSS– Email Me Your homework Spreadsheet– Homework email accepted for this assignment

only (without prior arrangements)

Complete Both Surveys Today You should be able to do this in lab and get

10 points relatively painlessly DO NOT TAKE SURVEYS HOME

Task 1: Let’s Enter Some Data in SPSS

What is SPSS?

Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Software for Managing and Analyzing Data Primary Tool for Data Analysis in PSY 395 Menu Driven but there is a Command

Language. Lots of Good Books on SPSS if you are

considering Graduate Study in the Social Sciences

Structuring a Data File

Two Views in SPSS: Variable View and Data View. Variable View – Shows the Names and

Characteristics of the Variables in the Data File. Data View -- Shows Cases and Variable Names. A data set typically consists of a file where a case

(participant in the study) is in each row and a variable (item score or scale score) is in each column. This is called a Person-Level Dataset.

Typically we create Variable Labels that have some intrinsic meaning.

Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression - Short

Form(Cole, Rabin, Smith, & Kaufman, 2004)

• How often you felt or behaved this way during the past week?– 0 = Rarely/None – 1 = Some or a Little of the Time – 2 = A lot of the Time – 3 = Most of the Time

Item Content for CES-D Short

01. I was bothered by things that usually don’t bother me.02. I felt that I could not shake off the blues even with the

help of my friends or family.03. I felt that I was just as good as other people.04. I had trouble keeping my mind on what I was doing.05. I felt that everything I did was an effort.06. I felt hopeful about the future.07. I felt my life had been a failure.08. I felt fearful.09. People were unfriendly.10. I felt lonely.

What Do You Notice About the Items?

• Items 3 and 6 are in Reverse Direction

– Need to be reverse scored• Standard practice.

– Enter the participant's response to the item and then use SPSS to create a new “recoded” variable -> CESD3 becomes CESD3R

– We will cover this next week• Why not recode when entered?

– G of data entry is ZERO errors.

– “manually” recoding reversed items increases the chances for error.

• Triple Check Everything!

Data for Person #1

2CESD09

3CESD10

2CESD08

2CESD07

0CESD06

3CESD05

2CESD04

1CESD03

3CESD02

2CESD01

ResponseVariable Name

Create a Dataset in SPSS for this One Case

Make Variable Names Enter Data Correctly Save to your P Drive or Your Own Storage

Device (e.g., Flash Drive) Email File to Me

– Last Name then First Initial and Lab Section– Example: “DeShon R 1”

Tasks 2 and 3

COMPLETE SCANTRONS for 2 SURVEYS

Surveys

We are going to collect data in PSY 395 for educational purposes only.

Use PIDs on the short Survey (45 items). PIDs will be used for identification purposes for a retest study.

Do not use PIDS on longer survey. We are asking some sensitive questions. Your responses are anonymous! We simply want to gather some interesting data for laboratory exercises. Be honest!