Customer Reviews

Crash Course in SPSS for Windows

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book has little about using SPSS (the very basics). It has much, much more about simple statistics. I bought the book to learn SPSS, not statistics. If you are looking for a book on how to use SPSS, I recommend you look elsewhere.

I have taken several classes that have used SPSS. When I started taking these classes I had little to no knowledge about statistics. It was extremely frustrating to understand the texts that were put out by SPSS. After reviewing this book, I have a clear understanding of how to use SPSS. It made the difficult task of understanding the output simple. SPSS is intuitive, in the sense that it is simple to pick a test and run it. However, understanding which particular piece of data is of interest to you is not intuitive. This book helps clear up the jungle of data that you have to trek through to come up with your conclusion.

This isn't a complete book on SPSS and statistics, but it's a marvelous resource for punching in your numbers and reading the results. It takes you step-by-step through entering data, setting up your analyses, and interpreting your results. I loaned this to another grad student friend of mine, and it took me months to get it back--it's that useful to have on hand whenever you get stuck with SPSS.

This book replaces a mentor-- this is the best way I can describe the utility of this book. In that purpose, this book is great. I am not a student and I would have to pay for($$)help.

This book does not teach statistics except for 3-5 lines about a test's purpose. This book does not teach SPSS functionality in depth or how to use a computer.

I have low level statistics knowledge (never took a course), and average to good computer skills. If someone wants to expedite their learning curve on SPSS (as a mentor would), this works.