1. Downloading and Preparing a StudentVoice File for SPSS
ARL Tutorial
Author: Christoph Maier
Last updated: June 19, 2008

2. By the end of this tutorial you should be able to:
Download your survey responses from StudentVoice to a data file (Slides 3-8).
Read the data file into SPSS (Slides 9-10).
Prepare the file for analysis (Slides 11-20)

3. A. Download your survey responses from StudentVoice to a data file (Slides 3-8)
Log into StudentVoice.
Click on the title of your survey in the “Project Listing” window.

4. Click on the “Outline” button in the upper-right-hand corner of the window.

5. The “Outline” document will appear
The “Outline” document will appear. This document shows all survey items. It also shows the responses and StudentVoice coding for the responses for every nominal and ordinal variable. Print out this document. You may need this when you define your value labels (See slide 17).

6. (optional step) Save the document as a “Web Archive,single file (
(optional step) Save the document as a “Web Archive,single file (*.mht)“ file for later access.

7. In the project window, click on the “View Results” button
In the project window, click on the “View Results” button. (see slide 4)
When the Results window appears, Click on the “Export” option.
Under “Detail,” select both the “Use Alternate Codes” and “Include all Open Ended” options.
Then click on Excel.

8. When the “File Download” window appears, click on “Save.”
Then, when the “Save As” window appears, save the data file. Don’t change the “Save as type”, even though this will be an Excel file.

9. B. Read the data file into SPSS (Slides 9-10)
Open up SPSS.
To read your file into SPSS, do these steps:
From the “File” pull-down menu, select the “Open” option and then the “Data” option.
In the “Open Data” window find the subdirectory where your file is stored.
Change the “Files of Type” to the “Excel(*.xls)” option.
Click on the desired file name.
Click on the “Open” button, which starts the Text Import Wizard.

10. Choose the following options in steps 1-6
Choose the following options in steps 1-6. Click on the “Next” button after first five steps and “Finish” after the 6th step. There are no options in step 5.

11. C. Prepare the file for analysis (Slides 11-20)
After your data set opens, notice in the bottom left-hand corner of the SPSS workbook two tabs that read: “Data View” and “Variable View.” Once the “Variable View” tab is selected, you will see a spread sheet that looks like:

12. Seven of the ten columns are important
Name of variable.
Type of variable (e.g. numeric, string, date, etc.)
3) Number of digits after the decimal point. (e.g. For decimals =2, the corresponding format for 1 is 1.00)
4) Variable Label: a short description of the variable which will appear in the SPSS output.
5) The values of categorical variables in SPSS are generally coded (entered as numbers). This column identifies what the codes stand for.
Identifies values that represent missing values.
Scale (e.g. age or gpa), Nominal (e.g. major, or eye color), or Ordinal (e.g. class standing, or level of agreement).

13. Column 1) Name of variable
It is best to use only the survey item number for the variable name.
Use the format: Q01, Q02, Q03, Q04, Q05, Q06, Q07, Q08, Q09, Q10, … rather than Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, Q5, Q6, Q7, Q8, Q9, Q10, …

14. SPSS Rules for Naming Variables
The variables:
must begin with a letter. The remaining characters can be any letter; any digit; a period; or any of the #, _, or $. So do not use blanks!
must not end with a period or an underscore.
must be named differently than all other variables in the file.
can be a mixture of upper and lower case characters, but case is preserved for display purposes only. So Height is the same variable as height.
must not exceed 64 characters, but keep them short.
must not be called: ALL, AND, BY, EQ, GE, GT, LE, LT , NE , NOT, OR, TO, WITH.

15. Column 4) Variable Label
Start with the question (e.g. Q01) followed by a short description of the variable.
For example, SPSS converted the StudentVoice variable name for survey item 1 to: Q1.Pleaseselectyourclassstanding
I would use Q01 for the variable name and
Q01 class standing for the variable label.

16. Column 5) Value Labels
The values of categorical variables in SPSS are generally coded (entered as numbers). This column identifies what the codes stand for.
Once you have created the value labels for a question, they can be copied and pasted to other variables that use the same labels.
To see how StudentVoice coded your responses, see the outline document (slide 5).

17. To add the value labels: a) Click on the back-end of the “Values” box
To add the value labels: a) Click on the back-end of the “Values” box The “Value labels” box will appear. b) Type in the code in the “Value:” box. c) Type in the corresponding label in the “Label:“ box. d) “Click on the “Add” button. e) After repeating steps b), c), and d) for all values,
click on the “OK” button.

18. Column 6) Missing Values
Identifies values that represent missing values.
If a survey item allows the user to respond “Unable to judge” or “Not applicable”, etc, the response should be designated as missing.

19. Missing Values Example
Suppose that “unable to judge” is coded 6 for a survey item:
After clicking on the back-end of the cell in the “Missing” column for the desired survey item, the “Missing Values” box will appear.
a) Select the “Discrete missing values” option.
b) Enter the missing value (i.e. 6) in the box.
c) Click on the “OK” button.

20. Be sure to save your SPSS file.