SPSS for Beginners

2026M1SPSS

Engels

Beschrijving

Originally SPSS was an acronym that stood for 'Statistical Package for the Social Sciences'. In the meantime, the software package has evolved into SPSS Statistics and one of the most used statistical packages in the world. The power of SPSS Statistics lies in its ease of use, its flexibility as well as its scalability. The syntax that allows you to apply a whole range of operations and statistical techniques to your data is covered by a relatively accessible graphical user interface that allows you to 'do statistics' without specialized programming knowledge or expertise in the algorithms of specific statistical methods. Of course, correct interpretation in context is essential.

This course gives you a solid foundation to translate your own research questions into a statistical target that can draw on a well-organized data file, and to further develop your SPSS skills based on your analysis needs. The introduction is designed to be hands-on-oriented. The participants are given a number of problems after which possible solutions are discussed and demonstrated.

Target audience

This introductory course is aimed at anyone starting to collect and/or store data for statistical analysis and interpretation.

Content

Table of content:

Chapter 1: Getting started

Installing (trial version) and opening SPSS
SPSS Data, Output and Syntax windows
SPSS file menus
Getting help in SPSS

Chapter 2: Importing Data

Manually inputting data in SPSS
Import and open .xlsx, .csv, .txt, .sav, .dta and other file formats
Data and Variable views

Chapter 3: Data Manipulation

Select Cases
Sorting of Cases
Visual Binning
Data Merge
Splitting data

Chapter 4: Manipulating Variables

Creating New Variables
Recoding into Different Variables
Recoding into Same Variables
Summarisation of Data
Measurement Scales

Chapter 5: Exploring data

Frequency Tables
Descriptive Statistics
Generating a Histogram
Generating Statistics
Building Graphs Easily
Cross Tables

Chapter 6: Statistical Analysis

Hypothesis Testing
- One sample, two-sample and ANOVA
- Post-Hoc tests
Correlation Analysis
Simple Linear Regression
Multiple Linear Regression

Exam / Certificate

There is no exam associated with this module. If you attend all classes, you will receive a certificate of participation by email at the end of the course.

Type of course

This is an on campus course. We offer blended learning options if, exceptionally, you can't attend a session on campus.

Schedule

Thursday 2nd October2025,

Thursday 9th October 2025,

Thursday 16th October 2025,

From 5.30 pm to 9.30 pm

Venue

Faculty of Science, Campus Sterre, Krijgslaan 281, 9000 Ghent

Fees

The participation fee is 780 EUR for participants from the private sector. Reduced prices apply to students and staff from non-profit, social profit, and government organizations

Industry, private sector, profession*: € 780
Non profit, government, higher education staff, (Doctoral) students, unemployed: € 350

*If two or more employees from the same company enrol simultaneously for this course a reduction of 20% on the course fee is taken into account starting from the second enrolment.

Registration

To register, add the course below to your shopping cart and proceed to checkout.

Is this your first registration for a Beta Academy course? In that case, you will need to create an account first. Afterward, you will receive a confirmation email to activate your account on the academy platform. You do not have to click on the activation link but can immediately return to your shopping cart to complete your course registration. If you do not receive a confirmation email for your course order, please contact our Science Academy at science-academy@ugent.be.

Are you currently on the Nova-academy website? To proceed with the registration, simply click on the "More information" box located on the left side.

UGent PhD Students

Doctoral School pays for your course on the condition hat you sign the attendance list for each lesson. If you are absent, please notify our academy in advance by email and provide the necessary documents.

By registering for a course or event organized by the Science Academy, you agree to the cancellation procedure that you can find on our website.