Quantitative Reasoning and Analysis

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11 Editing Output

The SPSS Statistics output Viewer allows a great degree of freedom for editing charts, tables, and other types of output. This information can all be exported to other computer programs for inclusion in documents created and developed in those programs. In particular, the information and graphics from SPSS Statistics can be suitably imported and handled within Microsoft Word, as well as other computer word processing programs.

Editing Basic Tables The first table below was produced by default by SPSS Statistics for a “Compare Means” function request for respondents’ occupational prestige scores and sex variables, using the following procedure:

Analyze → Compare Means → Means . . .

The next table has been edited. Labels have been added or edited, and at least one column was resized. You can directly edit the table in the SPSS output Viewer window by double-clicking the table and moving cells, double-clicking and retyping labels, and so on. This is done much the same way that table editing is done using a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel. Alternatively, you can use the following menu command:

Edit → Edit Content → In Viewer . . .

The table above was edited using the “Table Properties” option, located by right-clicking a cell in the table (or pressing <Control> and clicking the mouse for standard one-button mice on Apple Macintosh computers), as shown below:

After making the “Table Properties” selection, you will be provided with the dialog box that follows, which will allow editing of borders, footnotes, formatting, and so on:

If you wish to have the table open in a new window for editing, keeping it separate from all of the other output in your viewer, you can use the following menu options. This can allow more focus on the table being edited.

Edit → Edit Content → In Separate Window . . .

You can also use the SPSS Statistics pivoting trays function to change the layout of the table if you wish. While the table has been selected for editing, as described above, use the following menus to reveal pivoting trays.

Pivot → Pivoting Trays

You still have direct access to changing the table in the output Viewer or separate window, depending on which you have selected. The only difference is that in addition to editing the table itself, you now can avail yourself of the functions in the “Pivoting Trays” window.

The SPSS Statistics “Pivoting Trays” window gives the user more direct control over the features of the table, including the structure of the variables. This is particularly useful when there are multiple variables in the analysis, including one or more control variables. Interchanging variables using pivoting trays is easy to do and easy to reverse.

Another option available to you in SPSS Statistics is the ability to use a preselected table format. To do this, select the table and right-click to show the menu (or press <Control> while clicking the mouse on a Macintosh computer). From the menu, select the option “Table looks . . . .”

Now you will be shown a dialog box like the one that follows:

Choose the style you want and edit. In this case, the “Academic” table style/look was chosen and is displayed here:

Copying to Microsoft Word There are several options for getting an SPSS Statistics table into Microsoft Word. One way is to select the table in the SPSS output Viewer by clicking it once. Then copy the table by choosing this menu:

Edit → Copy

The keyboard shortcut for that function is <Ctrl> + C on a Microsoft Windows PC and <Apple> + C on an Apple Macintosh computer.

Edit → Copy Special . . .

At this point, you can paste the output into your word processor (e.g., Microsoft Word). This can be done by selecting the following menus in Microsoft Word:

Edit → Paste

Modern versions of Microsoft Word (Office 2007 for Windows, Office 2008 for Macintosh, and beyond) have a different menu structure. Simply click the “Paste” icon in the menu bar, or the word “Paste” underneath it. Again, there is a keyboard shortcut for this function: <Ctrl> + V on a Windows PC and <Apple> + V on an Apple computer.

By copying and pasting in this way, you will still be able to edit the tables in Microsoft Word. It can, however, be a bit more cumbersome to do the table editing in Word, and it can also pose layout complications. For instance, resizing the table may necessitate recalibrating font sizes within the table as well as many row and column dimensions. It usually benefits the user to do the table editing in SPSS Statistics and then, when editing is complete, copy the table into a document where it can be resized proportionally, like a photo or other object. To do this, select these menus in SPSS Statistics (and then those that follow in Microsoft Word or similar menus in another word processing program):

Copy → Special . . .

Or you can right-click the table, as shown above, and select “Copy Special . . .” that way. You will be presented with the following dialog box:

Make certain to check the box next to “Image (JPG, PNG).” By initial default, this box is not selected. You can change the default by selecting the “Save as default” check box at the bottom of this window. Next, select these menu options in Microsoft Word (or similar menus in another word processing program):

Edit → Paste Special . . .

Then double-click “Picture” in the “Paste Special” box that appears. There may be several picture formats to choose from (e.g., JPG, PNG). Usually, any of these formats will work; JPG files tend to have the greatest range of compatibility with other software. This will paste the table into the document as a largely noneditable (but resizable) object. Although the internal characteristics of the table can no longer be changed at this point, placement and sizing of the table are much more convenient this way.

Newer versions of Microsoft Word (Office 2007 for Windows, Office 2008 for Macintosh, and beyond) have a different menu structure. With the “Home” menu tab selected in Office 2007 for Windows, click the arrow under “Paste” in the upper left corner of the screen and choose “Paste Special . . .” from the pull-down menu that appears.

Importing and Preparing Text Files for Analysis by SPSS It is possible to have SPSS Statistics automatically import data from a text file that was created or edited with some other program that does not have a translation option when opening files, such as Microsoft Excel or Stata. For those files, you would simply open the file, and SPSS would categorize and format the data automatically. With text files, there is a six-step process to do this.

File → Open → Data . . .

When presented with the “Open Data” dialog box, click the pull-down menu for “Files of type” and select “Text (*.txt, *.dat, *.csv).” If you have a text file that does not have one of these extensions, you might append the “.txt” extension to your file. Now, click “Open” and the Text Import Wizard will be launched.

If your file does not have special formatting, click “No” where asked if your file matches a predefined format. Then, click “Next >.”

When presented with Step 2 of the Text Import Wizard, choose whether your data are separated into columns of exact width, or if there is something specific separating each number (such as a comma, a semicolon, a space, or a tab). Also, if the first row of text in your data file includes the names of the variables, select “Yes.” Once you do that, you will see the names of the variables disappear from the preview at the bottom of the window, indicating that the names have already been classified. Now, click “Next >.”

In this example, the data begin on Line 2 because the variable names occupied Line 1. If

you have an additional space between the names and the data, you would choose Line 3 in the dialog box above. If your data are line by line, choose “Each line represents a case”; otherwise, if there are no returns in your data file (or if there are frequent returns within cases), choose the other option and indicate how many variables there are (total) in your file. Note that there must be a response (even if for missing data) for each variable in each case for this method to work. Finally, choose how many cases you wish to import. Typically, all cases are imported, and then you can sample from them quickly and easily using SPSS Statistics (see Chapter 3, “Selecting and Sampling Cases”). Now, click “Next >.”

Choose the characters or delimiters that separate variables in your text file. Then determine whether text strings in your file are marked with quotation marks or other indicators. Now, click “Next >.”

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In Step 5 of the Text Import Wizard, you can rename any of your variables and establish the type (numeric, string, etc.). You could skip this step and carry out these housekeeping tasks in the Variable View of SPSS Statistics once the file has been successfully imported. Now, click “Next >.”

In the final step of the text importer, you are offered the option to save the setting for this import, which can be useful if you will be importing text files of this precise format in the future. Also, SPSS Statistics gives you the option to paste the command syntax for this function into the output Viewer, which could also be used later to perform this task identically, or with edits for different variable names, and so on. Click “Finish,” and you will be presented with the imported file in the Data Editor window.

Editing Charts and Graphs The SPSS Statistics output Viewer allows interactive editing of charts and graphs. Not only can labels, titles, numbers, legends, and so forth be added and edited; the actual type and style of the chart or graph can also be changed from the output interface.

Suppose you create a clustered bar graph, like the one that is created below:

Graphs → Chart Builder . . .

For this graph, we wish to examine the dependent variable “cappun” (opinion about capital punishment/favoring or opposing the death penalty for murder) as distributed across race/ethnicity and gender. We will use race and sex, respectively, to analyze those dimensions. This version of “race” is the recoded version, including information from the variable “Hispanic.” For details on how this variable was recoded, see Chapter 2, “Transforming Variables.” The race recode is specifically dealt with in the following section of the chapter: “Recoding Using Two or More Variables to Create a New Variable.”

Click “OK” to produce the bar graph. Now, for a more comprehensive and interactive way to edit the bar graph (or any other SPSS Statistics chart or graph), select and double-click the chart or graph. A new “Chart Editor” window will pop up, as pictured in the following image.

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Note that the chart is shown above using patterns to differentiate columns, rather than color. Patterns are particularly useful for printing monochrome output, such as that produced on a black-and-white laser printer. Color charts are the default, unless you change the preference settings for SPSS Statistics using the “Options” box, as seen below:

Edit → Options . . .

However, even if you have not changed the default from color to patterns, there is no need to scrap your work. You can switch from color to patterns (or the other way around) by using the “Properties” window. See the illustration of the “Properties” window after the next paragraph for details on exactly how to perform the switch.

Numerous editing options are available in the “Properties” window, which usually opens automatically with the “Chart Editor” but can also be accessed by selecting the following menus:

Edit → Properties

You can also reach the “Properties” box by using the shortcuts <Ctrl> + T on a Windows PC and <Apple> + T on a Macintosh computer.

Using the pull-down menu for “Element Type,” you can change the type of graph in the output, from a bar graph, for example, to some other type of graph, like a pie chart or an area graph. It is not necessary to go through and rerun the graph/chart function. It can be rebuilt directly from the “Chart Editor.”

By selecting “Style” by the X Cluster variable, “race of respondent,” you can choose whether to have the graph in color, black-and-white patterns, or some other method of illustration. For this example, the “Pattern” style was chosen over the color option, as is often best for a monochrome printer output.

A title has been added by selecting “Options → Title . . .” from the “Chart Editor” window. Here, a text box will be added to the top area of the “Chart Editor” with the word title; simply replace that word with what you would like to title your chart. A footnote to indicate the source of data used to create the graph has been added by selecting “Options → Footnote . . . .” Here, a text box will be added to the bottom area of the “Chart Editor” with the word footnote; replace this with the appropriate footnote. In this case, the data come from the 2014 General Social Survey.

Also, notice that the graph has been rotated vertically, so that we are able to better see the bars in the back row. You can change the vertical and horizontal rotations on the overall image by using the following menus:

Edit → 3-D Rotation

For this example, the vertical rotation was augmented to 30 degrees, but you should select whatever degree of rotation works best with your image.

Access the full 2014 data file and the 1972–2014 Cumulative Codebook at the student study site: study.sagepub.com/wagner6e.

http://study.sagepub.com/wagner6e

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