SPSS is a powerful computer package that can be used to carry out a wide range of statistical analysis. Before carrying out any formal statistical analysis, users are encouraged go through a preparatory first step.
It is important to ensure that the data has been correctly entered into the Data Editor of SPSS. Errors during data entry would result to misleading conclusions. It is very tempting to proceed to formal statistical analysis after ensuring that the data has been correctly entered. We strongly advise against this.
The procedure of data analysis using SPSS and indeed any other statistical package, should be thought of as a two step process:
If you embark immediately on formal statistical analysis, you may miss the most important feature of your data. Also, formal statistical analysis assume some characteristics about your data. If these assumptions are wrong, the results of statistical analysis may be quite misleading.
Many Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) techniques are available in SPSS. These include: Frequencies, Descriptives, Explore, Crosstabs, Case summaries. These are located under Statistics on the main menu bar. An example of EDA can be found in Getting Started with SPSS for Windows .