Split your data file by a categorical variable in SPSS

in this video we're going to look at how to use the split file tool in SPSS now split file is different from select cases split file will split your data into different groups and you can define those groups and then it will analyze all the data in all the groups where a select cases is just selecting specific cases to analyze so let's split our file by gender and then we're going to create some descriptive statistics for males and females separately just to give you an example so if I go to data and split file I have two options here one is to compare groups and one is to organize output by groups now this only affects the output of your analysis if I choose compare groups I'm going to get output from males and females in the same table if I choose organize output by groups I will get a separate table for males and a separate table for females so you can choose which you want I'm going to choose compare groups so I get them in the same table and gender is the variable by which I'm splitting my file so I move it to my groups based on box make sure you leave sort the file by grouping variables chosen because it needs to be sorted and then go ahead and click OK if I go back to my data file I can see that my file has been sorted by males and females so all my males are first and all my females are second now if we go back to the output file you'll see there's nothing here there's just a log of what I did but there's no output and that's because I haven't done any analysis yet in order to get out what I need to do something so just to show you what the output is going to look like let's go ahead and get some descriptive statistics for males and females so analyze descriptives I'm going to use the frequencies options just my preference and let's look at gross annual income go to statistics and just going to choose a few so mean median standard deviation and range you can choose any ones you want go ahead and click continue and I'm going to uncheck display frequency tables because I don't want one I just want my statistics and click ok now you'll notice the output has come out in the same table males on the top females on the bottom and I have my summary statistics here for each gender if we go back up to data and split file if I choose organized output by group just click OK nothing's going to happen until I do an analysis so let's go back and do what we did before so analyze descriptive statistics for male here's my descriptives my second table is for a female here is my descriptives so for the split file it just splits your file like SPSS considers males and females to be two separate data files but they're still in the same place now once you're done remember to go back and unsplit your file so I'm going to hit the reset button so it goes back to analyze all cases and click OK now my file is still remaining sorted now if you're quite particular about how your data set looks you can go back and sort your file again by ID so you don't want to keep it this way if we go to data and sort cases I'm going to choose to sort them by case number which is my first one and click OK I'll go back to my data file and now it's back to its original state and it's sorted by case number rather than by male and female so that's how you use split file

Channel: BrunelASK

Views: 208,047

Rating: 4.8628573 out of 5

Keywords: SPSS (Software), Split File, SPSS v20, Tutorial

Id: 2mKU8Sev6Gk

Length: 3min 48sec (228 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 19 2013