SPSS/PASW 18 Core System and Statistics User’s Guides are Available to Download

There are many important reasons for obtaining a user’s guide for software packages. The least of which is to be able to identify and access each available software option and, once accessed, understand exactly how to “put it to use” in practice. This is especially true when opening the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences or SPSS (now rebranded by IBM as PASW).  SPSS helps researchers to address a series of unavoidable challenges when they conduct quantitative research (e.g., How to: build a versatile database, enter and define data, transform/recode variables, merge external data into an existing data set, run a series of statistical tests, generate tables and charts, develop reports, and so on). The problem is that student researchers often have both procedural and data analysis-oriented questions about SPSS that often occur outside of the time spent conducting in-class SPSS assignments.

To address this concern, the SPSS/PASW 18 Core System User's Guide and SPSS/PASW 18 Statistics Base User’s Guide are now available for you to download to your hard drive. The documents range from 3-5MB so be sure you have a little time to download them if your internet access is not high speed. There are two ways to access each user’s guide:

1. Locate “SPSS 18 User’s Guides” on the left side of Broken Pencils, right-click over the User's Guide of interest, click on SAVE TARGET AS and save it to the location of your choice (such as your hard drive or a flash drive).
2. Right-click on this link: SPSS 18 Core System User’s Guide, click on SAVE TARGET AS and save it to the location of your choice.
3. Right-click on this link: SPSS 18 Statistics Base User’s Guide, click on SAVE TARGET AS and save it to the location of your choice.

Once they're downloaded, be sure to put them in a location that is easily accessible. When you open a user's guide in Adobe Reader (i.e., in .pdf format), use the tree structure on the left side of the screen to scroll down to the procedure you want explained. Did you forget how to RECODE a variable into a new one?  Just open the SPSS/PASW 18 Core System User's Guide, scroll down to Data Transformations (CH8), click on the RECODE sections and apply the procedure to your current needs.

Note: I have also provided the SPSS/PASW 18 Brief Guide on this site's menu of SPSS user's guides. This document usually accompanies the SPSS Student Version of the software program so, while it is more limited in scope, it can provide you with quick answers to your SPSS-based research needs.

I hope these documents are helpful.

Professor Ziner