[nabs-l] SPSS info

[Cindy Bennett]

A while ago, I mentioned that I would receive some training from a
grad student I know with JAWS and SPSS. She has been very helpful, and
I wanted to share what I have learned so far.

Right now, she uses SPSS versions 16 and 19. 19 is the current
version, and most schools and research workplaces keep the current
version. She had to go through her school to get version 16.

She has version 19 on her work desktop. Before she could even use it
with JAWS, she had to obtain a fix from Freedom Scientific. This fix
actually works. I remember trying one that came out for version 17
when I was in undergrad stats, and it didn’t work, but this one does,
so that is an improvement.  Before she uses SPSS, she has to close all
programs, restart the computer, and only run JAWS and SPSS. She had to
add RAM to her computer so that it has 8 gigs which is more than the
typical computer has. Apparently, the computer cannot handle running
JAWS and SPSS with under that amount of RAM.

Even after those accommodations to maximize the productivity of the
program, she says that after several analyses, the computer sometimes
restarts. That being said, she is working at a professional research
firm, so homework assignments for stats classes would definitely not
be working with data sets of 31 thousand.

The version we practiced on was 16 since it works better with JAWS,
and since it is on her work laptop. She is using JAWS 12 and Window’s
XP. I do not know if there is a version 16 of SPSS that works with
Window’s 7 since it is updated so frequently.

When you open SPSS, there are 2 windows, the data view, and the
variable view. The variable view is where you label your variables. It
is best to do this first. Each row represents a variable like age or
gender, and each column represents something about that variable that
you can set like how many decimal places to round to, what type of
variable it is, etc. this is where you can code for variables. For
example, you can specify 1 for males and 2 for females. This way, you
could just enter 1 or 2 into the gender column of the data view, and
the output table which I will describe later would then code the
findings accordingly.

Pressing control t toggles between the variable and data views. The
data view can be described as a spreadsheet. Each column represents
one of the variables you specified in the variable view. The variable
you specified in the first row of the variable view is the title of
column 1 in the data view. Each row of the data view represents a
case, or one subject of the study. Typically, people would enter their
data into the data view. However, my friend prefers to save the SPSS
file as an Excel file at this point. The reason for this is that JAWS
lags when moving among cells, so she can enter data faster in Excel.
Also, each time you move down a case in the data view, JAWS specifies
the variable name. This would be somewhat tolerable if it simply said
the variable such as age or gender, but it says a lot of other
syntax-like crap as well which contributes to JAWS lagging. My
communications instructor at BLIND, Inc. said that there could be some
options in verbosity to eliminate some of what JAWS says, but I
haven’t explored this.

So, once you save as an Excel file, you can open the Excel file and
enter your data. The columns in Excel would correspond to the columns
in SPSS, so whatever data corresponds to the variable in row 1 of the
variable view should be entered in column A in Excel.

At this point, I would close the SPSS file so as not to confuse it
with the SPSS file you will make later.

Since the purpose of SPSS is the ability to run a variety of data
analyses, you have to save the Excel file as an SPSS file once you
have entered your data. You can then open the SPSS file. The analyses
are found in the menus. Once you run an analysis, an output table will
appear, but JAWS will not say anything. So, you have to export it (NOT
SAVE AS) to Excel. After doing this, you can then easily read the
results of the output table.

My friend also prefers to explore data sets by saving them as Excel
files because of JAWS lags and because you cannot do searches for data
within SPSS.

I am also working on Macs at BLIND, Inc., and we downloaded the trial
version of SPSS onto one of the MacBooks. I was unable to navigate
anything when entering the program, but now that I have a
conceptualization of what is supposed to be there, we will try again,
and I will let you know if I get anywhere with it.

There are a ton of things I can go into about SPSS, but I think that a
lot of it can be explored or learned in statistics classes. I think
that the important thing is to gain a conceptual idea of SPSS. I had a
positive experience since I had run into so many dead ends. Although
version 16 is somewhat hard to find in school settings which are
constantly updating technology, IBM is doing beta accessibility
testing for version 20, and I am supposed to receive more information
about that in April. So, maybe that will be better. However, at this
point, I would fight for version 16. I know that it can be tedious and
that Excel and other free softwares are more accessible and can
perform some of the analyses, but SPSS is a really good skill to have.
It is the common software for schools and workplaces, and it seems to
be more comprehensive than other programs.

If you are interested in learning more about the beta testing, you can
email lar at us.ibm.com. I have no idea if they are still taking beta
testers, and it was about a week before I got a response, so don’t be
disconcerted if you don’t get a reply immediately. Other than that, I
know nothing about the promised accessibility of future versions or
about the beta testing process.

If you would like me to explain anything in more detail, just let me
know. And, if you have any more knowledge about the program like
accessible features I might have left out, please share.

-- 
Cindy Bennett
B.A. Psychology, UNC Wilmington

clb5590 at gmail.com
828.989.5383