Hi there,
Im really needing some help for my dissertation and would appreciate
any responses as my tutor cant help me with this!

Basically ive looked at 3 generations of women and asked them to rate
a questionnaire about mate selection, for 2 kinds of relationships. Im
aware that i will be doing a 1 way anova on each trait, but i dont
know how to organize my data in SPSS!
(ive only done this for one relationship so far as i dont know what im
doing) ive labeled my first column groups, then the next 20 are all
the traits that have to be rated.
Under the groups column i have assigned them A,B, C for their group
then put in their scores.
This is all in 1 spread sheet and when i go to descriptives to analyze
the data, i dont know how to separate the groups out, and the variable
'group' never comes up.
Have i done this completely wrong?

Thank you so much for any responses!

*Short answer:*  Look up CROSSTABS, MEANS, and SPLIT FILE in <help>.

*Long answer:*
If I am interpreting your message correctly for independent variables 
you have 1 between subjects factor( group with 3 levels) and 1 within 
subjects aka repeated factor (type of relation).  You then have 2 sets 
of 10 trait measures one set for each relationship or you have 2 sets of 
20 measures.  Which is it?

When you say group never comes up do you mean that it is not there in 
the Variables View or do you mean that there is no option in the menus 
to get to get descriptives separately for each Group?

Do you have all 20 (or 40) trait measures in a spread sheet or do you 
have 2 spreadsheets one per relationship?

What is the response scale for the ratings? Are the traits from previous 
research? Are they intended to be items in summative scales?

What questions/hypotheses are you using the data to address?

How were the respondents selected?

from curiosity that are the relationships? You mention "mate" are you 
using a dialect where mate means spouse or a dialect where mate means 
acquaintance/friend regardless of gender?

At your school do you have a committee guiding and evaluating your work? 
Is this a doctoral dissertation?

I strongly advise that you work face to face with a 
methodological/statistical consultant to help you learn what you need to 
know.  If you have a dissertation committee you may want to recruit such 
a consultant for that committee.  The answers to the questions below may 
make it easier for us to make suggestions on getting the tutoring you need.

Where are you going to to school?  In what department?  Do you intend to 
teach and or do research after you finish your degree? Or are these not 
activities you anticipate?

Art Kendall
Social Research Consultants

On 3/23/2010 8:02 AM, Jem wrote:
> Hi there,
> Im really needing some help for my dissertation and would appreciate
> any responses as my tutor cant help me with this!
>
> Basically ive looked at 3 generations of women and asked them to rate
> a questionnaire about mate selection, for 2 kinds of relationships. Im
> aware that i will be doing a 1 way anova on each trait, but i dont
> know how to organize my data in SPSS!
> (ive only done this for one relationship so far as i dont know what im
> doing) ive labeled my first column groups, then the next 20 are all
> the traits that have to be rated.
> Under the groups column i have assigned them A,B, C for their group
> then put in their scores.
> This is all in 1 spread sheet and when i go to descriptives to analyze
> the data, i dont know how to separate the groups out, and the variable
> 'group' never comes up.
> Have i done this completely wrong?
>
> Thank you so much for any responses!
>    

On Mar 23, 10:02=A0pm, Jem <jemunderd...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi there,
> Im really needing some help for my dissertation and would appreciate
> any responses as my tutor cant help me with this!
>
> Basically ive looked at 3 generations of women and asked them to rate
> a questionnaire about mate selection, for 2 kinds of relationships. Im
> aware that i will be doing a 1 way anova on each trait, but i dont
> know how to organize my data in SPSS!
> (ive only done this for one relationship so far as i dont know what im
> doing) ive labeled my first column groups, then the next 20 are all
> the traits that have to be rated.
> Under the groups column i have assigned them A,B, C for their group
> then put in their scores.
> This is all in 1 spread sheet and when i go to descriptives to analyze
> the data, i dont know how to separate the groups out, and the variable
> 'group' never comes up.
> Have i done this completely wrong?
>
> Thank you so much for any responses!


Hi Jem,

In addition to Art's suggestions, you will find that some procedures
in SPSS only work with numeric variables and so will not display any
string (text) variables in the variable lists. This could be why your
'group' variable does not show up in some of the menus. You can easily
convert this to a numeric variable by using the Automatic Recode
procedure (in the Transform menu). It will create a new variable with
the three groups assigned 1,2,3 instead of A,B,C.

Re your specific queries, Descriptives does not include a feature for
splitting the results by subgroups, so for that you would need to use
Split File first, and then Descriptives. Alternatively, you can use
the Means procedure to get the same descriptive statistics and it does
allow you to include a grouping variable (what it calls 'Independent
List' in the dialogue box). This doesn't require using Split File
first.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Kylie.