SOC 305, Prof. Robert Martin Southeastern Louisiana University

Source: The Association of Religion Data Archives (

Source: technicallyfunny.com

Source: The Association of Religion Data Archives (

Source: seriouseats.com

Source: 1.html

Source: mathwithlarry.com

Source: slate.com, from RottenTomatoes.com (edited)

What percent has M. Night Shyamalan’s RottenTomatoes score decreased from “The Sixth Sense” to “The Last Airbender”?

Percent Change = 85 6

Percent Change = 85 6

Virtually any type of graph you want to make in SPSS is available through the “Chart Builder” feature. Using the menu items at the top of the SPSS window, go to: Graphs -> Chart Builder… Data in this PPT come from the YouthAttitudes dataset, Appendix C in our class’ Bachman & Paternoster textbook.

To make a graph in SPSS: -Click on the type of graph you want to make under “Choose from:” at the bottom left. -You can choose from several graphs of each type using the icons that appear at the bottom-middle. Generally you will want the simplest (will be the 1 st icon)

Click on the icon for the graph you want to make, and drag it into the large Chart Preview window at the top-right. For example, to make a simple bar graph, click on the 1 st (simplest-looking) bar graph icon and drag it to the Chart Preview window. (You will usually want the simplest looking icon you see.)

This loads a preview of what your chart will look like (the sizes of each bar, line, pie chart slice, etc. will vary randomly). To tell SPSS which variable you want to graph, select a variable from the list at the top left. Drag it to the bottom of the chart (where it says “X-Axis”). Note that in the Element Properties window, the “statistic” that SPSS will use for the Y-axis is set as the “Count.” You can change this using the drop-down window to whatever statistic you want.

Above, I clicked and dragged the variable “bfsteal” to the X-axis. (To see variable names instead of labels, right-click on the variable list and select “Display Variable Names.”) This procedure is virtually the same if you want to make a bar graph, line graph (with categorical variables) or a pie chart. Clicking the “OK” button will open an SPSS Output window, which will create your bar graph.

Here is the most basic version of your graph. If you want, you can right-click on the graph, choose “Copy,” and then Paste it into a Word document or other word- processing software. You can change your graph (change colors, add data labels, make the bars run sideways, etc.) by double- clicking on it, which opens the Chart Editor.

Double-clicking on the graph opens the Chart Editor window. You can make a lot of changes to your graph here. To add a title, click on “Options” and then select “Title.” This will let you type in a title. -After you type in your title, you can alter its font, size, color, etc. Click somewhere else in your graph, and then click once on the title. You will see a new window labeled “Titles” appear to the right of the graph. -Click on the “Text Style” tab in this Titles window to change the appearance of your title.

Clicking once on a bar will highlight all the bars in your graph (look closely to see a yellow highlight around each bar). This will let you change the properties of your bars all at once.

With all bars highlighted, click “Elements” at the top of the Chart Editor, and then “Show Data Labels.” This will label each bar with the number of people in each category (see next slide).

Your bars now have data labels. You can change their size as shown in the Properties window on the right (click on the “Text Style” tab, and choose a Preferred Size; hit Apply when finished). You can also click and drag them to a new position, and you can change the background color (shown as white above) using the “Fill & Border” tab in the Properties window.

Make your bars horizontal instead of vertical by choosing: Options -> Transpose Chart. - Closing out of the Chart Editor boxes will apply all your changes to your graph in the Output window.

You can make a pie chart in a similar way. Go to Graphs -> Chart Builder, and follow the same instructions… only this time, choose from “Pie/Polar” in the bottom left, and drag the pie chart icon into the Chart Preview window. - The default is to show the number of people in each category of your variable. If you want to show percentages instead, choose “Percentage” from the Statistics drop-down menu on the right. Click the Apply button to apply your change to the chart.

Here is a pie chart with data labels added (I double-clicked on the chart to open the Chart Editor). - You can rotate your pie chart by clicking once on it; this will show the Properties window. Click on the “Depth & Angle” tab and use the Position Slices options to pick the position “on the clock” where your chart will start. (As shown here, the biggest slice “starts” at the 12:00 position.)

You can also choose what you want your data labels to show. Click on one of the data labels. Then go to the Properties window and click on the “Data Value Labels” tab. As shown above, the percents in each category are the only thing “displayed.” Click on the variable’s label (“How wrong do your best friends…”) in the “Not Displayed” window, then click the green arrow next to that window. Finally, click “Apply.” This will show the category names as well as the percentages in each slice. (To see all of your labels, you may need to un-check the box that reads “Suppress overlapping labels” and then move the labels around.)

Another type of graph you might be interested in making is a bar graph that breaks down responses to a question by some category, such as sex or race. Use the second bar graph icon (shown by the blue arrow) to make this kind of a chart.

The window to the right shows how to make a bar graph that compares people’s answers on the variable stealing (measuring, “How wrong is stealing?”) based on whether they are male or female. The only difference between how you set up this chart vs. how you set up a regular bar graph is in the box at the top right (“Cluster on X”). You click and drag the variable that contains the groups whose answers you want to compare to this “Cluster on X” box.

Above is the chart (copied and pasted from the SPSS Output window) that compares the number of males and females who gave each of the 5 answer choices to this question.

When you have continuous variables like “hours of TV watched per week,” you can create a histogram – this shows that the variable is continuous, because its bars are all next to each other.

We create a histogram like we would any other graph, but there’s one difference – you should tell SPSS how big you want each bar in the histogram to be. (In other words, how many hours of TV will go in each bar?) - Do this by clicking the “Set Parameters” button on the right window, in the Statistics area.

This is the window that opens when you click on the “Set Parameters” button. A “bin” is the same as a “bar” in SPSS. Bin size = bar size. SPSS will choose the bin sizes by default, but you can pick a custom width by selecting a “custom” bin size and choosing an interval width (how wide your bar should be). An interval width of 10 means that the first bar will include everyone who watches 0 to just under 10 hours of TV. (People with 0 TV hours are in the 1 st bar and so are people with 9.99 TV hours. However, people with 10 TV hours are NOT in the 1 st bar.)

You can also pick where you want your graph to start, by choosing a value to “anchor” your first bar (a.k.a. “bin”). If you pick a “custom value for anchor,” you would be telling SPSS where to start generating a graph.

Here is the basic version of this histogram.

You can create a “fit line” that shows the shape of your histogram by clicking the “Add Interpolation Line” icon, which is noted with the blue arrow drawn in the graph. You can change the shape of the line using the “Interpolation Line” tab in the Properties window as shown.