SPSS compatible format

[SCOTT]

I have been asked to collect raw data in an SPSS compatible format,
preferably a .SAV file otherwise a .CSV file.

What is SPSS?

I am only familiar with "normal" excel workbooks. Can I save all the data
in an excel worksheet and convert it to an SPSS compatible format afterwards?
(I see that I can save it as a .csv file but it doesn't appear to do much -
just loses the formatting. Isn't .csv for saving text rather than data?)

Thanks, Scott

 

[chris ciotti]

I have been asked to collect raw data in an SPSS compatible format,
preferably a .SAV file otherwise a .CSV file.

What is SPSS?

I am only familiar with "normal" excel workbooks. Can I save all the data
in an excel worksheet and convert it to an SPSS compatible format
afterwards?
(I see that I can save it as a .csv file but it doesn't appear to do much -
just loses the formatting. Isn't .csv for saving text rather than data?)

Thanks, Scott

Greetings Scott -

SPSS is a powerful statistics and analysis package used widely in the social
sciences. You can check it out here: http://www.spss.com/

As far as importing data and such things (I can only comment about the Mac OS
X version - Version 11), SPSS can read comma and tab delimited text files via
a wizard that runs after you open the file. You can layout the data file in
Excel, save it .csv and read it into SPSS. I'd recommend using a header row
as the SPSS wizard asks if the first row contains variable names. Also,
Excel (at least Excel for the Mac) has a column (and row?) limit which I've
never run into using SPSS.

Good luck.

--chris