Using custom tables in SPSS

hi and welcome to yet another tutorial video for data analysis in spss in this video i'll be showing you one of the very powerful features for summarizing data in spss the custom tables so by now you probably already know that you can calculate frequencies for categorical variables and summary statistics like the mean and standard deviation for scale variables using the frequency procedure if you don't know how to do that yet make sure to check out my video spss in 15 minutes the link is right there at the corner at the top and in the description below you also should be familiar with crosstabulations and mean comparisons which i covered in the video exploring relationships between variables the link should be right in the description below as well now custom tables is a swiss knife for all of that in microsoft excel it's called a pivot table but in spss it's just called custom tables you can create any kind of summary table be it frequencies for a single variable or relationships between any kind of variable with it custom tables are my go to functionality when i have to summarize a lot of variables at once especially when i have a large survey with so many variables on my hands without further ado let's jump in and create some custom tables you'll find the data set i'm using here in the description below so go ahead and download it so we can be moving together right to get to the custom tables go to the menu and click analyze tables custom tables so to build a custom table you simply drag a variable and drop it where you want it to go whether in the rows or in the columns or even inside another variable which i'll show you in just a short moment let's drop the sex of child variable in the rows by default we have the count which we also know as frequency let's run this for now so now we have a simple frequency table let's go back and see what else we can have analyze tables custom tables now before you run the custom table procedure it is advisable to make sure that you have set the measurement labels of the variables properly when we drop the sex of charge variable into the rows it knew to break down the variable into its categories and use the count as a statistic because the variable has been designated as a categorical variable specifically it's a nominal variable so the cool thing with the custom table dialog box though is that we can actually change the measurement labels right on the variables list on the left for example i want to use the parent's highest education variable below the sex of charge variable but look what happens when i do that notice here we have this placement marker make sure it's right below the 6 of charge variable now look instead of having categories of highest education it has added a column for the mean instead and why is that well parent's highest education has been assigned as a scale variable so it's trying to summarize it using the mean let's drag it back to the variables list now let's change the measurement type right click the variable from here we know it's an ordinal variable so let's speak all in on now we drop it back perfect i also add the bits with class below this variable we have already seen that we have the counts as a summary statistic but the custom table functionality actually has hundreds of other summary statistics that you can use first we click any one of the variables in the rows then click summary statistics here here in the statistics box behold the statistics galore what you see here by default are simply the categories of the different stats that you can use if you need percentages for each of the critiquers you can expand the column percentage category so for example i'll drag and drop the column in percent that's fine for now click apply to all then let's close this now click ok i say this is the best table to summarize all of your demographics at once and just paste it into your report let's go back and see what more we can do with this so far we have only been summarizing each variable individually but with custom tables we can also cross tabulate by simply dragging a categorical variable into the columns i'll grab the base with class variable now notice how as we move it we see the replacement markup so we can drop this variable outside of any of the other variables or on top to replace the variable or inside to disaggregate the other variable feather or at the top where i want it to be great let's click ok now in just a few clicks we have a crosstabulation with column percentages apart from frequency counts and percentages we can also calculate summary statistics for continuous variables with custom tables let's go back to the dialog box for this example let's reset the dialog box would you like to reset all tabs yeah that's right now i would drag and drop sex of child into the rows then i will drag and drop childbirth weight right after the 6 of child variable notice how instead of the count we now have the mean let's go to summary statistics and add more statistics i'll expand the count category let's drop the count in there then scroll down to the end i need the standard deviation from here that's fine click apply to selection then close let's run this awesome now we have a main comparison of chart birth weight by six let's go back and add something else this time let's move the sex of charge variable to the columns then we'll change the measurement level of parents of heights education variable to ordinal now drag the variable right before the childbirth word variable and click ok now we have mean comparison of child birth weight by sex of child by parents highest education check out the link in the description below for many many more custom tables you can produce using the data and use that for your practice there are many more great spss tutorials coming to the channel so make sure that you have clicked the subscribe button and also turn on the bell button to never miss anything all the best as you practice

Channel: Data for Development

Views: 42,209

Keywords: SPSS, Custom tables, Descriptive statistics, Statistics, Datafordev, Data for Development, SPSS in 15 minutes, Mean, Median, Standard deviation

Id: IOd2jOHx_5A

Length: 6min 52sec (412 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021