SPSS - Point and Click Statistics
April 19, 2016
SPSS - Point and Click Statistics
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- IBM SPSS Statistics
Overall Satisfaction with IBM SPSS
SPSS is one of several tools that is used by academic researchers within my organization. SPSS is particularly used by those frequently dealing with quantitative research, whereas those who participate in qualitative research stick to other types of software for their analysis. SPSS is especially helpful for conducting statistical analyses for those who are not as familiar with statistics.
- SPSS is known for being more user friendly thanks to its UI. Other statistical softwares can have a steep learning curve, but SPSS makes the basics fairly straight forward.
- SPSS has the option for coding your own statistical tests in addition to its "point and click" UI. This allows for more complex work if needed.
- SPSS is "intelligent" in that it automatically ignores common issues such as missing data points.
- While SPSS is easy to use for basic statistics, the software quickly becomes clunky when the statistics become more complex.
- Although SPSS tries to provide an easy UI, sometimes it can get too complex and become cumbersome.
- The more familiar you become with SPSS, the more tedious it feels to use it because the "point and click" interface slows you down.
- SPSS has allowed me and other researchers to analyze data in a simple and efficient manner.
- While SPSS doesn't produce the results, the software helps researchers to uncover results. In that sense, SPSS facilitates the research process.
- SPSS has also made an impact in teaching students about statistics because it allows them to run tests without spending the time to learn a programming language.
If I were to compare SPSS to other software like SAS, STATA, and R, I would consider SPSS the easiest to learn and use. While SPSS certainly has its drawbacks, the other programs available have a steeper learning curve that makes them difficult to adopt. For those put off by the price tag of SPSS, however, I would recommend R as it is open source. That being said, SPSS has the significant advantage of its UI.