Generating Descriptive Statistics in SPSS

The following tutorials will demonstrate how to generate descriptive statistics in SPSS.

Frequency1 and Percentage2

When generating these statistics, the Data Editor must be open with the appropriate data set before continuing. Problem Using the data in the file New Product Development Performance.sav , determine the frequency and percentage for industry of sample firms only. Solution 1. From the Analyze menu, select Descriptive Statistics. From the Descriptive Statistics drop down menu, select Frequencies. This will open the Frequencies dialog box.

I n this case, we want to know the descriptive statistics of variable industry. Therefore, we

will select industry variable into the variable list by left clicking on the right arrow button between the boxes to move this variable over to the Variable(s) box. Note: To calculate statistics for many variables, simultaneously add variables to the Variable(s) box.

5.

Click

Display frequency tables and then click OK. The Descriptives dialog box closes and

SPSS activates the Output Navigator to illustrate the statistics.

1 2

Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. Percentage is a way of expressing a number as a fraction of 100

Window Output

Example of Table in Report

Table 4-1 shows the basic attributes of the sample firms. These attributes includes five major items in the study: (1) industry, (2) history, (3) capital, (4) annual sales, and (5) number of employees.

Table 4-1 shows the more than 28.8% of the sample firms are belonged information and mechanical industry. More than 84.9 % of the firms operate more than 10 years. 20.5% of the firms have capital more than 1 billion NTD, and about 61 % of the firms have the annual sales more than 1 billion NTD. 76% of the sample firms have employees less than 1500 people. Approximately 51% of the sample firms have employees less than 500 people.