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IBM SPSS Statistics

IBM SPSS Statistics

Overview

What is IBM SPSS Statistics?

SPSS Statistics is a software package used for statistical analysis. It is now officially named "IBM SPSS Statistics". Companion products in the same family are used for survey authoring and deployment (IBM SPSS Data Collection), data mining (IBM SPSS Modeler),…

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Recent Reviews

GOOD SOFTWARE IBM

8 out of 10
March 22, 2024
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thanks to the fact that IBM® SPSS® Statistics is an incredible statistical software platform, we can make decisions in real time in our …
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User friendly analytics

9 out of 10
March 07, 2024
Incentivized
I use SPSS to analyze survey data for my org. My analyses range from simple descriptive statistics to correlations and complex models. I'm …
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Video Reviews

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IBM SPSS Review: Analytics Team Is Able to Review Statistics Quickly & Comprehensively
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Pricing

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Subscription

$99.00

Cloud
per month

Base

$3,610

On Premise
one-time fee per user

Standard

$7,960

On Premise
one-time fee per user

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.ibm.com/products/spss…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

IBM SPSS Custom Tables Explained in Two Minutes

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The IBM SPSS Regression Module Explained in Two Minutes

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IBM SPSS Bootstrapping Explained in Two Minutes

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IBM SPSS Advanced Statistics Explained in Two Minutes

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Product Details

What is IBM SPSS Statistics?

IBM® SPSS® Statistics is a statistical software platform boasting an interface and feature set that lets organizations extract actionable insights from data. Advanced statistical procedures help ensure high accuracy and quality decision making. All facets of the analytics lifecycle are included, from data preparation and management to analysis and reporting.


IBM SPSS Statistics Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

SPSS Statistics is a software package used for statistical analysis. It is now officially named "IBM SPSS Statistics". Companion products in the same family are used for survey authoring and deployment (IBM SPSS Data Collection), data mining (IBM SPSS Modeler), text analytics, and collaboration and deployment (batch and automated scoring services).

Reviewers rate Implementation Rating highest, with a score of 8.7.

The most common users of IBM SPSS Statistics are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(434)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(51-75 of 84)
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Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use SPSS to combined datasets, easily modify individual cases, input quantitative data, collect/ modify qualitative data, and conduct quick parametric and non-parametric analyses.
  • Imputing mixed-methods data
  • Quick user-friendly analyses
  • Non-parametric statistics
  • Limited coding capacity for modifying the analysis
  • Need to manually add in code for follow-up analyses
  • Not easy to modify and track database management
  • Only prints up to 2 decimals in the output
SPSS is great for small datasets, students, or people who struggle with statistics. It is not good for large database management.
Ho'omana Nathan Horton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I'm an instructor in the English Department and the IT/research tools staff in the Linguistics Lab. I use SPSS to analyze linguistic data and I also help students use the software. We use SPSS in our Linguistics Lab primarily for statistical analyses of social sciences data, especially related to Sociolinguistics and Teaching English as a Second Language.
  • SPSS offers powerful functionality for virtually any statistical operation one needs (at least in my field, the social sciences).
  • There's also tremendous and versatile online support from both IBM themselves and others who have created helpful walkthroughs for performing various statistical analyses.
  • The output also looks nice and is fairly customizable.
  • The interface isn't very intuitive at all and is mostly just a bunch of drop-down menus with little direction. Bottom line: You really need to know about stats before you use this software. However, because it is the leading GUI stats software, there is abundant documentation for this software both from IBM and from universities and others that detail how to do various operations (and interpret the output).
If you already know about statistical tests - which to choose, how to run them, and what they mean - this is an outstanding basic statistical suite. I feel that it's prohibitively expensive for an individual unless you're really doing a huge amount of complex stats, but for a university or other institution, this is a nice tool.
Bernardo Cavalheiro | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In my workplace, we tend to gather as much data as we can about our coworkers. By doing so, there's plenty of data to be analyzed. Even more, I also do research and data analysis regarding client's briefings. As such, SPSS helps me analyze relationships among variables, by performing regression analysis, ANOVAs, etc.
  • SPSS is a pretty easy to use software.
  • It comes with many available actions that will allow you to do many analysis.
  • It you feel like something is missing, you can always do some coding on the syntax in order to "tell" SPSS specifically what you are looking for.
  • It allows you to download and use addons that make it an even more complete software.
  • The data visualization options are really poor. The software is great for data analysis, but when you think about making a presentation or something like that, you will have to rely on other softwars to do so.
  • It can take a while for a newbie to master it.
  • The price is a bit high, specially for a single customer.
SPSS is well suited for work in which you have to establish several relationships among variables (regressions, ANOVAS, MANOVAS). It is also suited to work side by side with Excel, since they complement each other. Therefore, SPSS is suited for both academic and professional/organizational setups, as if provides different ways to solve many problems.
Ember Urbach, LMSW | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM SPSS is used by our organization for data analysis and reporting procedures. We evaluate various social programs and use data to support social programming across the state and nationally. This gives us the tools to easily summarize data and find statistically significant information to share with our stakeholders, policy makers, and social service providers.
  • Summarizing descriptive statistics
  • Labeling variables and input data
  • Utilizing programming language to easily generate reports
  • Learning curve is steep for some users
  • Interface can be complex at times
  • Does not run well on older computers we sometimes have to use
IBM SPSS is well-suited for summarizing large data sets, comparing data and variables, and finding correlates between and among data sets. SPSS allows individuals to share data sets and work collaboratively. SPSS is not well-suited for analyzing qualitative data or data sets that have not yet been coded, except for small variable changes. SPSS also does not have real-time editing so collaboration cannot occur at the same time.
Elizabeth Wiredu - Data Solutions Services | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use it to statistically analyse clinical research data for publication. I teach doctors to use it as well as academic researchers. I teach SPSS statistics to PhD students in a number of graduate schools, in the UK. SPSS is great entry to statistics and data manipulations for non-statisticians. It is simple to use with its online help manuals, only a click away.
  • The menu driven functionality makes it easier for non-statistician to use the software.
  • Easy to import Excel files into SPSS, for powerful analysis.
  • The built-on tutorials using the sample files and scenarios, are useful for self learning.
  • The newest version has so many choices to choose from that may intimidate a new user.
  • The landing page of the newest version 24 is less crowded.
For learning and teaching statistics using scenarios. Non-statisticians, learning to read in data, editing, importing, manipulating and running summary statistics. Also for advance user, using the syntax to run repetitive routines.
Rebecca T Barber, MBA, PHD | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SPSS is used in various pockets throughout the institution by both researchers and administration. It is far from the only statistical tool in use, but because many of the administrators were trained in colleges of education it is the most commonly used tool. Further, as a menu driven tool, the learning curve is easier for new users who enter administrative departments. Note that in MOST cases SPSS is being used as a desktop product.
  • Menu-driven interface allows for new, non-programming users to become productive quickly. This capability is significantly stronger than competing products, whose menu-driven interfaces often lack many important analytical features.
  • Syntax (code-based) interface allows for coding of repetitive analysis and automation. While most tools have this, it is an invaluable piece of the software that allows for access to less common options and provides a clear way of documenting any process. Further, SPSS puts the syntax for each command into the output file, making it easy to see exactly what command resulted in what output.
  • The output from SPSS commands has been enhanced to provide most of what an analyst needs in order to make a decision. This is helpful for new analysts, as it can guide them in the direction of a more complete analysis.
  • SPSS is rock solid. This is a well-established product with 24 versions under it's belt.
  • While substantial improvements have been made, the graphic capabilities remain opaque syntax-wise and relatively rigid through the menu driven interface. You need to know what you are doing, and even then the graphs created are not necessarily the best looking. I tend to extract the data and build presentation graphs in other tools.
  • Data mining capabilities are provided, but at a HUGE cost in a different tool. As a non-profit, SPSS Modeler is out of our price range.
  • Picky thing - SPSS does not compute marginal effects. Tools like SAS, STATA and R either provide those calculations automatically or at the very least make them trivial to get at. SPSS can't do it at all. From an econometric perspective, this is a HUGE drawback.
  • I'm not sure we need a new version with new licensing every single year. This is especially the case if you aren't pushing the limits of the feature set.
[IBM SPSS is well suited for] Statistical analysis, fast descriptive statistics and crosstabs, and any area in which those tasks are to be performed by an inexperienced or non-technical analyst. I would lean toward places that are new to applying statistical tests to their analysis, and send people with specific needs for highly complex analysis to other tools.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am a researcher and instructor at a large midwestern university. IBM SPSS is used across the campus by various disciplines for research. I use it for communication research to run statistics for content analyses, experiments, and survey studies. Overall, it has been a useful tool for running the tests that I have needed to run. It takes a few runs at it to fully understand the layout and functions, but it is easy to use once you get the hang of it.
  • Correlations are easy to run.
  • Labeling of variables.
  • Great charts and tables.
  • It is easy to import from Excel and export to Excel.
  • There are a few things that I know you can do in other statistical software like STATA that you can't do in SPSS. But it's a give and take. ANOVA is better in SPSS than STATA, but I hear from my friends in a different discipline that STATA is better for more complex survey research and regressions.
  • It takes a long time to run tests because there aren't many shortcuts.
  • Can be a little slow at times.
SPSS is good for researchers that are in the humanities and are conducting basic research. I have found it useful for analyzing data that I have collected through content analyses, basic survey research, and simple experiments. For people that will be running a lot of regression analyses and structural equations, they may want to look at using STATA.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I used SPSS for a semester as a student and explored it, as an individual, as an alternative to the current analytics software we are using. The business problems it can address are similar to other analytics software. SPSS is overall a powerful tool that can be used to for segmentations and regression analysis with their own 2-step segmentation analysis for segmentations.
  • Segmentation
  • Regression
  • Tech support
  • Very clunky in the user interface. Old.
  • Creating value labels
  • Very expensive
SPSS is great for segmentations and provides a robust platform using the 2-step clustering providing great insight on significance of the clusters. The regression function is great too though. One of the pitfalls of SPSS is that the user interface is rather "old" and could use an update compared to other competitors such as JMP.
Angela Falisi, MPH | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
At my current and previous organizations, SPSS was used primarily for data analysis, typically for small to medium sized data sets. From what I know, SPSS is one of several statistical software packages used at my current and previous organizations.
  • Very user friendly - the point and click interface of SPSS allows users to complete their activities simply and efficiently. Unlike other statistical programs, SPSS doesn't require knowledge of specific code.
  • Very easy to pull in data from multiple sources or enter in data manually.
  • Clean, simple format and it's clear where to go when you to view data and where to go to view the variables and their labels.
  • Limitations with incorporating weights (when using data from nationally representative samples).
  • From what I understand, SPSS doesn't handle large amounts of data particularly well.
  • I find it more useful as an analysis tool than a data management and cleaning tool.
From my experience, SPSS is particularly well suited for the analysis of small to medium sized data sets. Also, it is particularly useful for individuals with a good understanding of statistics and the tests that they want to run on their data, but aren't familiar with coding formats (like R or SAS).

I don't find SPSS to be as well suited for managing larger or more complex (weights) data sets.
January 09, 2018

SPSS for biology

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use SPSS to analyze my research data and help students learn to use SPSS through student research projects. It is a very simple interface which makes it easy to use. The only complaint is the the graphs are not great and I use a different software to make graphs for my publications. Otherwise you can find it cited as the statistical package used in all of my work.
  • Straight forward and user friendly for simple analysis
  • The split file feature allows for rapid analysis of large data sets separated in different ways with a simple click
  • Copy and past of tables into excel makes it easy to edit them to make the publication ready
  • Graphics are not usable for publication
  • Sometimes struggles with really large data sets
I primarily run regressions, ANOVA's, linear mixed models and non-parametric correlations. Works well for all of these. I also have use the split file and select cases functions very frequently.
Elizabeth Minton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used across the organization. IBM SPSS is used for analyzing quantitative data. Specifically within our department, it is used to conduct t-tests, various types of ANOVAs, regressions, and mediation/moderation analysis. It provides the opportunity to conduct statistically rigorous data analysis that can then inform trends in the field of marketing. We use it for publications in academic journals. The problem it addresses is identifying new ways to conduct marketing that are more effective than previous methods. By running experiments to look at product evaluations before and after marketing changes, we can use IBM SPSS to identify if one marketing tactic is better than another. It helps academics, students, and practitioners alike.
  • Dialogue boxes. I love that IBM SPSS has drop down menus, which are much better than some of the other statistical packages that require you to write purely in code.
  • Customizable. You can add in dialogue boxes of your own or from other users in your field. Specifically for the field of marketing, a macro known as PROCESS is used to conduct mediation analysis. This is not standard with SPSS, but the program is customizable so I can add this custom dialogue box to my set of menus.
  • Dual Licenses. I appreciate that when I purchase SPSS, I get a license for my laptop and another for my desktop. This helps keep costs down, but enable accessibility from wherever I need access to the program.
  • Fast. The speed of SPSS has definitely improved over the last several versions. Running stats tests are very quick, usually just a matter of seconds.
  • Renewal licenses. I didn't like when SPSS turned from purchasing the program outright to 6 month licenses. In the long run, it makes things more expensive as each change seems to be incremental. I could still run all of my necessary statistical tests on a version that was 2 or 3 versions ago.
  • If you are running structural equation modeling (SEM), you may find it easier to operate solely in another program. While they do allow data transition from AMOS to SPSS, sometimes it can be clunky.
  • Processing capabilities. If you have a slow computer, SPSS is going to be a pain to run. Installation takes up all the memory on one of my even faster computers, so I have to not try to run excess items while running SPSS.
IBM SPSS is well suited for basic data analysis for market researchers, academics, and students. It performs all the basic functions (t-tests, ANOVAs, regression, correlations) that people would need to do. However, if you want to get into hierarchical modeling or assessment of data within groups, it can be tougher to run in SPSS and other programs may be more beneficial.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SPSS is used widely by the marketing research department, which supports the entire organization. It is used for extensive data analysis of survey data, including descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations and other ways of slicing the data, and statistical analysis. It is often used to supplement the analyses done by survey vendors as a way to do deeper dives and respond to follow-up questions by business managers.
  • Deeper dives into the data - We often like to slice data into various segments, and SPSS cross-tabulation capabilities make this easy.
  • Statical analysis - Identify the variable that are most impactful in generative overall results. For example, what aspects of customer service drive overall satisfaction.
  • East of use - I like how the SPSS data structure is so well suited to people who use Microsoft Excel. In particular, taking an Excel data file and importing it into SPSS is easy. It does take a bit of work in defining variables and response categories, but you end up with a very powerful dataset for deeper analysis.
  • I would like to see the ability to control print outputs better. The data is all there but it's not easy to format the printouts for ease of reading them.
  • I'd love to see the ability to generate a lot more data in cross-tabulation output, e.g., the 20+ banner points we often like to see.
  • More powerful graphics, such as those in Tableau or even PowerPoint, would be very nice to have.
It is really the "go to"product for anyone doing surveys, who wants to do more than just a top-line overall responses) report. Perfect for analyzing data and doing deeper dives to drill down into the data.
Anissa Harris | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use SPSS Statistics 23 to complete and to guide personal as well as student research projects at the doctoral level. The entire graduate school has access to this software and most graduate students choose to use it in assignments and projects. We use it to analyze data and to teach research. In an educational environment, it is essential that students be provided guided experiences when learning about statistical analyses. For many graduate students, a capstone project, doctoral study, or dissertation is their first opportunity to do independent research. Across our university, SPSS is the go-to software that we provide access to and that we recommend for student researchers. It provides a uniform platform for educators and students alike to explore different analyses and learn to interpret their findings and results. As there are many ancillary supports and guides available, it is easy to find tutorials or support for students (or colleagues!) that may need guidance in using SPSS or in learning a new analysis.
  • SPSS provides a menu-driven board from which to select the appropriate analysis and variables. Having user-friendly processes is key in creating accurate data analysis, especially with new researchers.
  • SPSS offers advanced analysis processes for advanced users; novice users can simply "ignore" these bells and whistles until they are needed. Having the versatility to support experienced and new researchers is an important niche in education.
  • SPSS provides exportable graphics that can enhance external reports and communication of findings. This feature is super helpful, especially for new researchers who need to include graphics but who may not know how to make them from scratch.
  • SPSS continually updates their software, enhancing it to meet user needs or changes in the research field. As educators working in an ever-changing environment, having software that keeps pace with the culture and field is imperative.
  • Some new researchers are still overwhelmed by "all the choices" and menus in SPSS. Students may feel insecure or indecisive about how to explore it and properly complete assignments or research outcomes.
  • Although there are many external you tube how-to videos and support via a quick Google Search, the internal "help" tools are sometimes as complicated as the original problem. Creating "How to Run SPSS for Dummies" that is available INSIDE the product would be wonderful! Any support that is "on-site" builds confidence and security in new users.
  • Sometimes the terminology inside SPSS does not exactly mirror the research language a student or novice researcher finds on other websites. If SPSS provided a glossary of research terms and interchangeable meanings etc it would be a great support.
  • I have found many resources to support or explain SPSS integration into research courses. I think it would be a tremendous benefit to have some of these ancillary support websites or services noted and recommended from within SPSS. Although this offering may require collaboration or partnership with other organizations or products, I see the relationship as an opportunity to enhance the user-friendly nature of SPSS and also improve SPSS's reputation as a software for educators.
Not to be cliché, but SPSS suits ALL MY RESEARCH NEEDS. It is advanced enough to manage the most complicated quantitative parametric or non-parametric analysis and also clear enough to run a simple t-test for a graduate homework assignment. I have used it departmentally to run metrics on student interactions and academic progress as well as to determine department functionality in working with our students etc. I suspect it would not be suited for someone without any research basics as the menu choice would not make sense at all. I just returned from a week long national conference and everyone I talked to uses SPSS. It is the "go to" in educational research!
Abby Steele | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SPSS was used as the sole source of data collection, management, tracking, and analytics. It was used in the research setting, anyone needing to conduct or manage a research project was given access to the software. It addressed all issues of data management for research. All users were also provided learning materials and resources on the capabilities of the software.
  • The data analytics are far beyond the common capabilities of Excel or other more simple software packages.
  • The graphing capabilities are stellar. There are plenty of customization options.
  • The syntax has kept relatively consistent across various versions and updates, making it easier for the user to use various versions if needed without a large learning curve.
  • The overall use of the syntax is not especially user friendly to learn. However once a user takes the time to learn the functionality of the program is becomes very easy to make large changes or calculations to the data.
  • Easier integration with other systems, i.e. excel. Would make this software easier for project management. Uploading or downloading data sets can be difficult sometimes.
Anything with research or a need for running advanced statistics presents a great opportunity to use IBM SPSS. If you have a less involved need for analytics or data management then I would recommend a software program that is not as robust and is less costly. This is a great program to use, as it is historically popular in many industries.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IBM SPSS is used by the staff of the department of research for analysis of data from our surveys and educational activity (program) evaluation projects. RSNA is a medical association of radiologists in the business of providing continuing education to our members and the radiology community in general. We conduct numerous surveys throughout the year (needs assessment surveys, journal readership surveys, member benefit surveys, educational activity pricing surveys etc.) and use SPSS to analyze the data. SPSS is also used to analyze the participant feedback surveys from our continuing education activities.
  • Ease of pre-analysis data manipulation (including data cleaning) activities such as the easy of restructuring data, identifying duplicate cases, merging files, recoding variables, selecting cases for analysis etc. Helps expedite the data analysis process.
  • A very comprehensive online help that include easy to follow Tutorials. the Statistical Coach that guides you through the process of finding the appropriate procedure and Case Studies, that provide hands-on examples of statistical analyses and how to interpret results. You have a constant companion while using SPSS.
  • Ability to work with multiple data sources, compare the contents of various files and move easily between the data sources.
  • A powerful menu-driven statistical analysis system. I still write syntax out of habit but I can also accomplish all my tasks through the menu-driven system.
  • Would like to receive information on software patches and updates - especially on patches.
Well Suited:
Selecting of proportionally representative samples from various subsets of a population.
Quick tabular and graphical summary of variables in a data file.
Simple univariate to complex multivariate data analysis.

Lance Huntley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SPSS is only used in the Market Research department at this time. The business problems it addresses are: used as a data warehouse, used as a reporting tool, used as an analytical tool, calculates market size and market share, tracks and reports on construction activity at micro and macro levels, forecasts business KPIs and Leading Economic Indicators, tracks and reports on business activity from across the entire enterprise, feeds the GIS and sets up the datasets used for spatial analysis, general reporting of tables, charts and graphs.
  • Help desk with SPSS is PHENOMENAL. All of my questions, regardless of what it might be, get answered promptly.
  • I feel that IBM has done a good job of keeping SPSS affordable for cash strapped research departments.
  • I feel that IBM has done a good job of integrating SPSS statistics desktop and Modeler with their products.
  • I wish the help files were still bundled with the software and not "online" as you need to have internet connection to access the software's help files. Please make it an option at least during the install, or download package.
  • Like the answer previously, this is also tied to the internet, and the webpages for SPSS typically make me cringe when I have to use an online tool. IBM should have simplified this aspect of software a long time ago... perhaps Watson can help?
  • I don't like the trend where software is going into the cloud, and I know that IBM wants to push SPSS there. I prefer software installed on my laptop! I would consider keeping with whatever the last version of SPSS desktop was released and using that until I retire in the next 20 or 30 years.
SPSS can do everything you need it to in a data science roll in a production environment. We are running our business on information processed via SPSS. I think IBM needs to get out there a lot more and aggressively push SPSS desktop and Modeler. It's simple AND powerful, you really do get it all when you use SPSS.
Brianna Wilson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Many of the professors who teach Introduction to Statistics at Grinnell College choose to use IBM SPSS as the primary statistical package for the course. SPSS is a software that fits very well with the curriculum of Introduction to Statistics. In particular, as an intro course, students enter the class from a variety of different academic disciplines. Since students are encouraged to explore their own interests in relation to topics covered in class, it is essential that SPSS is able to give them an accessible platform to do so. Furthermore, the learning curve for SPSS is relatively quick. As a student in the course, within the limited time of a semester, I learned to comfortably manage a data set in SPSS and even began to use it for my own research interests.
  • The Variable View tab of SPSS is extremely useful. It is helpful to have one location where it is possible to not only look at the variables in the data set, but also manipulate characteristics of each variable, add new labels, and even do some troubleshooting.
  • The menu-driven layout of the analysis functions makes the learning curve relatively quick. Additionally, after selecting a test, there are checkboxes that allow you to customize the output you will receive.
  • The drag and drop method of creating graphics is very intuitive and allows for users to be visualizing the graphic as they are creating it.
  • The aesthetics of the graphics created by SPSS are not easy to manipulate. Thus, it would be great if SPSS could allow you to export a graphic to another program like excel, where headings, colors, spacing can be more easily edited.
  • SPSS sometimes gives the option to generate a graphic automatically as part of the statistical test. However, the graphic created is not always accurate. For example, the automatically generated clustered bar chart for a cross-tab mistakenly clusters around dependent not independent variable.
SPSS is particularly well suited for quantitative data. More specifically, it is most useful for any type of hypothesis testing: comparing proportions, means, ANOVA, etc. The program also naturally allows for calculation of a variety of basic descriptive statistics. It is not well suited for qualitative data, because the specifications for what kind of characters can occupy a cell are very strict. That is, unlike in Excel, one could not write a note or a sentence in a cell.
Ashley Dockens, AuD, PhD | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The majority of researchers in our Department utilize IBM SPSS. It is also commonly used in other departments across campus.
  • Ease of running assessments.
  • Allowance to copy and paste information or upload information from other data sources (e.g., Excel).
  • Layout has drastically improved over the years and is much more user friendly.
  • When allowing data transfer from other sources, having an easier way for labels of data to be moved as well would be fantastic.
  • Some of the layout is still difficult to maneuver.
  • Figures and graphs produced could have cleaner look.
All of my quantitative statistics needs have been met by IBM SPSS. I don't love the figures or graphs it produces, but otherwise great!
Ariana Tart-Zelvin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used by a limited number of individuals in the department. It enables us to electronically organize, store, and analyze all sorts of data. It's fairly user friendly, especially for individuals that don't know how to code in programming languages. You can run high levels of statistical analyses using SPSS, test hypotheses for your research using SPSS, create graphs, etc. You can learn valuable descriptive information about an entire data set or about a single variable. Also, it's easy to create new variables using your existing data or perform transformation on problematic variables. You can use SPSS to see if existing data meets basic assumptions in order to conduct certain statistical analyses on the data.
  • IBM SPSS provides user friendly drop down menus.
  • If you hit "paste" it creates code for you based on what you have selected from drop down menus.
  • IBM SPSS easily organizes large data sets.
  • IBM SPSS keeps data secure with password protected databases.
  • IBM SPSS is not as flexible as R, for example, when analyzing data.
  • It is difficult to move data back and forth from IBM SPSS and Excel.
  • It's hard to manage very large (30,000+) data sets in IBM SPSS.
IBM SPSS is well suited for analyzing several different types of data. It is very well suited for psychology-related data or data associated with mental health. It's well suited for academics who have a basic foundation in statistics. It's also well suited for individuals who do not have coding experience. It's not very well suited when you need to analyze data collected from surveys - like SurveyMonkey, for example. It's not well suited for individuals who do not know basic statistics.
Julie Ressalam, MPH | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Working at a university, we have certain analytic products that are available to us for free. Last year, we had an open license to SPSS. That changed as of this year and now only one person on our team may have it downloaded, but SPSS has been used multiple ways by us. We use it for internal reliability and validity analysis of survey data. SPSS is fairly easy to use on this front: writing and running code in its Syntax window is straightforward and user-friendly.

In terms of data cleaning (which is needed for our type of analysis) SPSS is not ideal. Handling and cleaning large datasets is better done in Excel and then imported into SPSS. This is because SPSS recognizes a row of data as one entity (or in our case "respondent"). Once the data is imported in, you are constrained to what SPSS can't "see" or understand about your data that other analytic programs might be able to.

SPSS is a great starting point for statistical analysis, and it is used across the university in most basic statistics courses.
  • Variable manipulating & recoding is fairly easy with SPSS. Not only does SPSS have a recoding function, you can also just write the syntax for this and save it for future use.
  • SPSS is mostly user-friendly and gives budding statisticians and analysts empowerment with its easy to use menus and easy to read messages.
  • SPSS outputs are easy to make sense of and follow, no matter the skill level. If using the tables generate to put into another report, it is easy to do so as well. By right-clicking a table, SPSS gives you options of how you would want to copy it and in what format. This is very useful when generating reports with this data, which I often did.
  • SPSS does not update frequently, new versions seldom come out. There have not been many changes to the interface (if any) and because of this, you are stuck using older statistical methods of analysis. When searching for user guides and tips online, many have not been updated in years, because of this.
  • Data cleaning capabilities could use some work. It is tough to build a data set in SPSS because it is limited to what you import, and if the variables aren't imported correctly, there is a great deal of correcting that needs to be done and this can be time consuming. It adds a number of extra steps that could otherwise be avoided.
  • It can be difficult to handle large files, or robust data. Text inputs are also cumbersome for SPSS if they are longer than a certain number of characters. Since we often analyze survey data that can contain open ended questions, this is problematic.
It depends on what the colleague is looking to use SPSS for, but if it is basic statistics or frequencies, SPSS can handle that. When trying to group variables, say demographic information and analyze the breakdown of a population, SPSS is well suited to the task. SPSS regression functionality is also very useful, it gives easy to read outputs for regressions (multinomial, logistic, etc.) and is great for this type of analysis. More robust statistical methods like MANOVA or ANCOVAS may be inappropriate.
SANDEEP SINGH | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I used IBM SPSS during curriculum. I preferred using SPSS for data cleaning, predictive modelling and statistical analysis. IBM was used by department of university fro Data Mining. We handled many problem using the software most of them were from Kaggle.





  • Broad range of statistical models : Sometimes you will have a general idea, but often the statistical model will change as you start examining your data. Or you will want to run an alternate analysis as a quality check for the originally planned analysis. IBM SPSS offers a broad range of highly flexible statistical models: most notably the general linear model and a variety of logistic regression models.
  • Graphical interface with select and drop functionality: Before you start your data analysis, you need to understand how your data behaves. This is best done graphically. IBM SPSS provides scatterplots, boxplots, and histograms that help you to see patterns in your data. You shouldn't publish findings based solely on an intuitive interpretation of graphics, of course.
  • Better output organization: IBM SPSS provides a broad range of data documentation (especially value labels) that will help you to ensure consistency in your data entry.
  • SPSS modeler should include functionality where user can build their own models similar to R apart from using regular models.
SPSS makes data analysis quicker because the program knows the location of the cases and variables. When using a spreadsheet, users must manually define this relationship in every analysis. You can use a wide range of options for data entry, often entering the data into IBM SPSS is the best choice. IBM SPSS offers a simple spreadsheet format for data entry that is intuitive and easy to start with. More importantly, IBM SPSS provides a broad range of data documentation (especially value labels) that will help you to ensure consistency in your data entry.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I have used IBM SPSS Modeler to build models in my department of customer analytics. This has helped my organization to come up with predictive models for different projects. For instance, I built a decision tree to categorize different customers and their behaviors which have proven results. Also, I have done descriptive analysis, data filtering, data cleaning, data merge and built many more models like regression, logistic regression, auto neural networks and much more.
  • Very easy to use and build models.
  • Faster executions.
  • Cheaper compared to other modelling tools.
  • Reliable results.
  • Though it is easy to use, some of the user interfaces are not really fun.
  • Hard time executing multiple models together.
  • SAS has more nodes for models.
IBM SPSS Modeler is well suited when you have to build models quicker and efficiently. It doesn't take long to grasp IBM SPSS Modeler skills. There aren't as many features as other modeling tools have. When you have to do in-depth data cleaning, learn descriptive statistics and build some models like rule induction. IBM SPSS Modeler fails somewhere.
Mykola Osipov | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I used a trial version of IBM SPSS, and I needed just the regression analysis part of SPSS. I wanted to find a proper model to fit my data, but I did not find SPSS helpful.
  • All I can say is that the regression analysis part of SPSS is very poor. The GUI is amazing, but the content is useless!
  • SPSS can be used for building simple regressions, only.
  • Researchers need the system to find models that fit observed data the best, and they do not know what model or its structure to choose. Researchers should enter the data and press the button, and SPSS should tell them, like "Hey buddy, these models... fit your data the best, and the standard errors are..", or, "Hey buddy, I'm sorry, I was not able to find any suitable model for your data..."
As I said, SPSS is excellent for regressions like: y=ax+b, y=ax2 +bx+c, or y=sin(x). However, I was not able to build multidimensional models y=f(x1, x2, x3,...,xm).
September 21, 2016

My experience with SPSS

sagar mohod | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used in a department. It is mainly used for analysing information that was gathered based on questionnaires.
  • Ease of use
  • Simple user interface
  • Availability of required functions only
  • More functions required for professional use like SAS
  • More sample size to be accepted
  • Easier availability of updates
[IMB SPSS is well suited for] Market research, survey based projects, market research analysis, quantitative research, business analysis, and product based research
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It was recently discontinued as the license available expired following the departure of a BI manager. It was mainly used by myself as an attempt to provide statistical rigour using inferential statistics to problems which were usually only approached using descriptive statistics. It was not widely used across the organisation and only in Marketing/Bi as far as I am aware.
  • It provides incredibly accurate and robust results.
  • The print-out is incredibly detailed and allows you easy understanding of the post-hoc results and can be saved and easily re-examined at a later date should someone query the findings.
  • It is good for saving time by being able to add multiple descriptive statics alongside your inferential etc., at the touch of a button.
  • Some of the lexicon can be confusing, especially for those who are not out-and-out statisticians. Some people may use the term MANOVA or ANOVA instead or 2-way multivariate etc. There sometimes has to be a lot of Googling to quickly find the test that's right for that situation.
  • The output, whilst functional, isn't very attractive or necessarily easy to output to other BI software packages which are more aesthetically pleasing or easy to digest for non-statistically minded audiences.
  • The input is not always as easy as can be in organisations which are not set-up for One-Subject-One-Row data input and this can involve lots of manipulation. Perhaps more trans positioning tools to take data from Excel, Access or if they are present make them more obvios.
It is very well suited to any social-science orientated situation. It was especially good for conducting exercises such as website analysis where there are subject pools and large surveys.
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