Descriptive Statistics – Frequencies

[Slide shows SPSS screenshot with a table open in Data View.] 

Let's say you want to analyze the categorical variable, you start with the same steps: Analyze [menu], Descriptive Statistics, but now you click on the button that says “Frequencies”. Frequencies are really great for categorical variables. If you click Analyze > Descriptives > Frequencies, it will pop open a dialog box that looks like this.  

[Screenshot shows the Frequencies dialog box in SPSS, where you can select from the list on the left and move them into the “Variables” box on the right. On the right side of the same window, you see buttons with the Charts option highlighted.] 

And again, I've left the link at the top of the screen here for you if you wanted to go to the SPSS LibGuide to get some more information about this.  

In SPSS, if we've set the “Measure” properly in variable view, any ordinal or nominal variable should be either three different coloured circles, or a little bar graph with three different coloured bars. Those are our categorical variables.  

We can pick which of our categorical variables we would like [in the Frequencies dialog box], we can click the arrow and put it where it says “Variables”, and then we can ask SPSS to generate some frequency statistics for us. You can also click some buttons, for example, there's a “Chart” button here where you can ask it to generate a plot for you. 

[Selecting Charts opens the Frequencies: Charts sub‐dialog shown on the right.] 

 So if you wanted to look at what this data looks like, in this case, we've selected a bar chart, you can say I want to look at the Gender variable, show me a bar chart of this. You would then say “Continue”, “OK”, and you will get some information output in your output window.