What's new in SPSS for Windows

Enhance your capabilities for the analytical process and make your job easier. For this release, SPSS Inc. listened to current users and incorporated many requested features and benefits into SPSS® for Windows®. In fact, SPSS users voted the ability to export SPSS results to Microsoft® Word and Microsoft® Excel as the most-requested feature in the Software Ballot.

Experienced and new users alike will appreciate these benefits, which include:

• The all-new SPSS Tables^TM add-on module, featuring an interactive graphical user interface that shows you what your tables look like as you create them

• Data management improvements, such as the Variable Properties tool and the Copy Data Properties tool, which make it easier to work with your data dictionary

• The new TwoStep Cluster analysis technique for more accurate analysis of very large and mixed-variable datasets

• Improved workflow, which along with the ability to export results to Word or Excel, you can export data to SAS and Excel

Below you'll find a summary of new features and benefits available in SPSS for Windows.

New statistical procedures added in SPSS add-on modules

SPSS Tables

• The all-new SPSS Tables gives you more powerful, easier-to-use software for reporting and presenting analytical results to clients, executives and other decision makers. SPSS Tables responds to many frequently asked user requests, including a table preview builder, greater control of output during table creation, improved data management and more powerful command syntax.

  • Create tables more easily using SPSS Tables's new interface. Take the guesswork out of table building when using the new table preview builder included in the graphical user interface (GUI). The preview pane enables you to see what your table looks like before you click the "OK" button. This means you can confirm your table's appearance or edit it before producing output -- saving you time, especially when working with more complex tables.

  • Gain more control over table output for a more customized, professional presentation. For example, you can display or exclude categories with little or no counts for clearer, more consistent output.

  • More easily customize display with SPSS Tables's improved data management. You can now add subtotals, change variable types or hide categories from your table on the fly to present data more effectively. Additionally, you can use new data management facilities in SPSS Base to get more efficient data preparation, such as labelling.

SPSS Advanced Models^TM

• Get even more flexibility when modeling data that have a nested structure (such as students within classrooms, consumers with families or voters within census neighborhoods) to create multilevel and random coefficient models using enhancements made in the Linear Mixed Models procedure

  • Correlated random effects: this type of model is very important if predictors are covariates (also known as random coefficient models)

  • Non-spatial covariance types: First-Order Ante-Dependence, Heterogeneous, First-Order Autoregressive, ARMA (1,1), Heterogeneous Compound Symmetry, Compound Symmetry with correlation parameterization, Diagonal, First Order Factor Analytic, Toeplitz, Heterogeneous Toeplitz, Unstructured Correlations

  • EM Means for fixed effects: display estimated marginal means of the dependent variable in the cells and their standard errors for the specified factors

  • Save standard error of prediction

  • Test subcommand: supply divisor for coefficients of random effects

SPSS Regression Models^TM

• Save time in Multinomial Logistic Regression by specifying the reference category in your outcome variable.

New features added in SPSS Base for Windows

Data access/export

• Export your SPSS data file to seven types of SAS data files (including Windows and UNIX versions and a transport file). In addition, you can also save SPSS value labels to SAS .sas syntax files.

• Connectivity to DB2 UDB v. 7 for OS/390 and z/OS, Oracle 9i, Sybase 12.5, DB2 driver for AS/400

• Access to mainframe data sources on OS/390, including mainframe data such as Adabas, Datacom, IDS, OS/390 Sequential Files, IDMS, VSAM and ISAM

• Easily export your SPSS data to a current version of Excel.

Data management

• Easily set up your dictionary information (such as value and variable labels and variable types) to get your data ready for analysis using the Define Variable Properties tool. A data pass made first enables SPSS to present a list of values and counts of those values so you can intelligently add labels.

• Save work by easily copying dictionary information from one variable to another and from one dataset to another using the Copy Data Properties tool. This provides a template facility that copies dictionary information (such as variable and value labels) between variables and datasets. Also, it provides a ready means of cloning a dictionary.

• Easily take your transactional data and get it ready for analysis (e.g, crosstabs and logistic regression) by creating indicator variables in the Data Restructure Wizard

Statistics

• Use the new TwoStep Cluster analysis technique to get the most accurate identification of clusters in your data. This state-of-the-art algorithm allows you to find clusters in:

  • Very large datasets

  • Mixed datasets with continuous (such as income) and categorical level variables (such as job type)

    • Cluster analysis algorithms in other software (including previous versions of SPSS for Windows) work only with continuous-level variables

  • Number of clusters can be fixed or determined automatically

  • Update the model when new data are added, so you don't have to re-run the model on the entire dataset

Output enhancements

• Improve your workflow. Easily export pivot tables, including the current view or all layers, to Excel. This empowers you to put your SPSS tables (including those created in SPSS Tables) on the same sheet or on separate sheets in the same Excel workbook file.

• Improve your workflow by easily exporting SPSS output into Word for final report creation. Pivot tables can be converted to Word tables with all formatting saved. All graphics are converted into static pictures.

General usability

• Easily navigate though your SPSS output by using the mouse wheel scroll

• Switch output languages; for example, switch between Japanese and English

• Compare SPSS for Windows to other versions

• Find the best statistics for specific applications

• See the products available to use with SPSS for end-to-end analysis