SPSS Syntax Editor Window – Quick Overview of User Interface

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In SPSS, we usually work from 3 windows. These are: the data editor window, the output viewer window and the syntax editor window. The third main window is the output viewer window. Right, let’s now download and open bank.sav. We’ll use it for walking you through the main parts of the syntax editor.
The single best SPSS practice is doing everything from syntax. Some reasons for this are
you’ll always know exactly which steps you took in which order so you can prove that your results are correct;
if you made some mistake don’t we all sometimes? you can correct it and rerun everything you did in just seconds;
you’ll work way faster than from the menu and you never have to do things twice;
some of the best SPSS tricks and time savers are available as syntax only.
So say you run 10 tables and charts from the menu. And then you realize you should have filtered out all respondents working in IT. Now you have to start all over again: remove the unwanted respondents and click your way through all the same menus and dialogs again…Sounds like a terrible idea. Doesn’t it? Unfortunately, I see students having to do days of SPSS work all over again on a daily basis. Not working from syntax really is the very worst SPSS practice.