Range, Variance, and Standard Deviation in SPSS

Get the Frequency first! Step 1. Frequency Distribution  After reviewing the data  Start with the “Analyze” sub-menu  Select “Frequencies…”  Move the variables over to the right column  Click the “Statistics” button

Get the Frequency first! Step 2. Output: Range  The very first box will give you a lot of information about the data (descriptive)  Range is HS – LS, so High Score subtracted by the Low Score of the distribution.

Get the Frequency first! Step 2. Output: Range  Checking whether SPSS is giving you the right range.  See the next box (the first variable) HS – LS = R 500 – 18 = 482

Get the Frequency first! Step 2. Output: Range  Checking whether SPSS is giving you the right range.  See the next box (the first variable) HS – LS = R House – Other = ???

Get the Frequency first! Step 2. Output: Range  For Categorical variables with labels, you will need to adjust SPSS to see why it is “3”

Get the Frequency first! Step 2. Output: Range  Go to the sub-menu of “Edit”  Click on “Options…”

Get the Frequency first! Step 2. Output: Range  In the “Output” tab…  Make sure these two are “Values and Labels” in “Pivot Table Labeling”

Get the Frequency first! Step 2. Output: Range  Now you can see why the Range value is 3. HS – LS = R 4 – 1= 3

Get the Frequency first! Step 3. Output: Variance  Variance (s 2 ) is easily obtained from the first table.  Cost’s Variance is 21,  Housing’s Variance is.96

Get the Frequency first! Step 3. Output: Std. Dev.  Standard Deviation (s) is also easily obtained from the first table.  Cost’s Standard Deviation is  Housing’s Standard Deviation is 0.98  It is the row above Variance