A Step-by-Step Guide to SPSS for Sport and Exercise Studies

Nikos Ntoumanis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Topic: Computer Science
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134533572
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Computer Science

SPSS is the international standard software package for data analysis in the social sciences. This book is the only SPSS guide designed specifically for students in the fields of sport, exercise and kinesiology. It Includes sport specific cases and data throughout.

1 Introduction

In the area of sport and exercise students and researchers often face important questions. For example, in sport psychology, a student may be interested in examining whether the pre-competitive anxiety levels of a group of athletes can be predicted by a number of psychological variables. In exercise physiology, another student may want to examine the degree to which a particular training programme has improved the aerobic capacity of a group of runners. In biomechanics, one may be interested to look at differences in the take-off velocity in the long jump between elite and non-elite athletes. In motor control and learning, a student may find it exciting to investigate whether the number of errors in a complex motor skill will vary between high and low anxiety conditions. In the area of exercise promotion, a student may want to test the hypothesis that frequency and duration of exercise will relate to body fat percentage.

To answer these and many more questions, a student needs to be familiar with certain statistical tests. Some of these tests (e.g., t tests, chi-square, correlation analysis) can be performed by hand, but most of the others (e.g., MANOVA, factor analysis) are too complicated and would require a significant amount of time and statistical knowledge. Even some of the simpler tests can be exceptionally time consuming when the sample size of a data set is large. Fortunately, with the advent of modern computers most statistical tests can be performed within a few seconds. However, first of all, one needs to know how to enter a data set into a computer file. Furthermore, one must be familiar with the environment of the statistical software because it is not very difficult to select an inappropriate option, or omit an important option, and obtain inappropriate results. Even when the procedure is correct, one needs to be able to understand and use the most important parts of an output. Furthermore, it is important for a student to be able to present the results in a dissertation or a poster in a technically appropriate manner. In addition, a student may want to create tables and charts which will illustrate the results of statistical tests. Lastly, a student should be in a position to rearrange and reorganise a data file, for example, to separate males and females, or to rank athletes according to their strength levels.

SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) can meet these requirements. SPSS is a comprehensive statistical programme with a wide variety of options and statistical analyses available for social scientists. It includes a number of statistical tests which can be used to describe data and examine various research hypotheses. Some of these tests are very common in the literature (e.g., t tests, correlation analysis), whereas others are employed less often (e.g., discriminant analysis). With SPSS you can create and edit a wide variety of tables and figures (charts) which describe and summarise one or more variables. Although there are many statistical programmes available in the market, SPSS is the most preferred choice of Sport and Exercise Science departments around the world. This is because SPSS offers a wide variety of options and it is a user-friendly programme (honestly!).

The structure of this book is based on the presentation of four main SPSS windows: Data Editor, Output, Syntax, and Chart Editor. For an explanation of these windows, see New in the File menu. The Chart Editor is available only when you double-click and activate a chart. Each window has a number of menus; within each menu there are various options. The most popular of these options are represented in a toolbar at the top of the window. The Data Editor window (Figure 1) has the following menus: File, Edit, View, Data, Transform, Analyze, Graphs, Utilities, Window, and Help.

The Output window (Figure 2) has two unique menus, Insert, and Format, but it does not have the Data and Transform menus.

The Syntax window (Figure 3) has one unique menu, Run, but it does not have the Data, Transform, and Insert menus.

Lastly, the SPSS Chart Editor (Figure 4) has four unique menus: Gallery, Chart, Series, and Format. However, it does not have the Data, Transform, Insert, Utilities and Window menus.

When you first open SPSS, you are presented with a small window (Dialog box 1) which includes a number of options. You can Run the tutorial if you are a new SPSS user or if you have questions that are not covered in this book! If you just want to enter new data select Type in data (see Data Entry below). The next two options (Run an existing query or Create new query) will open a data file which is saved in another application (software). To retrieve this data file, the system administrator of your university should provide you with a username and a password. Lastly, you can open an already saved SPSS file by selecting Open an existing data source or Open another type of file. If you do not want this dialog box to appear every time you open SPSS, tick Don’t show this dialog in the future.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Dialog box 1

Data Entry

Each row in a data file should represent a different study participant and each column should correspond to a different measure (e.g., date of birth, gender, type of activity, enjoyment of main sport, etc.) of a particular participant. Therefore, you should enter new data horizontally until all measures of the first participant have been inserted. Then you can go to the second row and enter the data for the second participant, etc.

It is very important that you label all variables and give details about their format. Click the Variable View tab at the bottom of Figure 5. Variable View is not available in SPSS 9 or in any earlier versions (use the Define Variable option in the Data menu instead). In Variable View, ten different columns appear which provide information regarding the characteristics of each variable in the data file.

Note that, whereas in the Data View variables are represented in columns, in Variable View variables are represented in rows. In the Name column you can give a short name to a new variable in the data file. Note that the name of a variable should be normally no more than eight characters long. In the Type column you can specify the type of a variable. Click on a cell and a new button will appear

. Click on this button and you will be presented with Dialog box 2. Select the String option if a variable is nominal (i.e., if it has letters instead of numbers, such as the names of sport clubs). Also, select this option if you want to name a variable with a combination of numbers and letters. By default, you can use up to eight characters to name the values of a string variable, but you can alter this restriction here. Select the Numeric option if a variable consists of numbers only. Select the Date option if the values of a variable consist of dates (e.g., date of an experiment, or date of birth of athlete...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1: Introduction
• 2: Data handling
• 3: Statistical tests
• 4: Chart and table options
• 5: Miscellaneous options
• Suggested reading