SPSS never goes out of style
April 22, 2020

SPSS never goes out of style

John Froehlich | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • IBM SPSS Statistics
  • Regressions

Overall Satisfaction with IBM SPSS

IBM SPSS is currently be used by the research department in our organization. We are in the business of public opinion research so we need software that can analyze data, run statistical analysis, and also process data. It helps our organization make informed decisions based off of the data and other inputs.

Pros

  • Statistical analysis
  • Data views on the respondent level
  • Recoding variables

Cons

  • Can be slow
  • Interface is outdated
  • Very basic and doesn't handle LARGE datasets very well
  • Merging datasets
If you are a previous SPSS user, it's great, everyone knows how to use it and there isn't much variation between the different versions. When working with datasets from different sources it's great to be able to look at them and get them to match up for a merge. There is a slight learning curve for new users and can be intimidating, but once you know how to use it, it can be a great resource.
It allows us to run analysis that we would not be able to do ourselves. It gives us the advantage of speed and control. It allows us to move at our own pace and not having to outsource the analysis to a data team and be on their schedule. It saves money since we are doing the analysis in house.
SPSS is the original statistical package. It might not have all the bells and whistles as they newer statistical software programs that you see out there now, but it does the fundamentals. Many of the more cloud base packages you have to upload datasets, and can't really "manipulate" the data all that well. Also most survey data is either exported in SPSS or CSV files so you know SPSS is the standard.
SPSS is well suited when you are dealing with respondent level data and need to clean, recode, or make changes. It's one of the only softwares that I always go back to using as it is the foundation of statistical software programs.
It might not be very useful when looking at BIG data, but it works for reviewing survey data.

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