II.

CROSSTAB TABLES

Crosstab tables have been discussed in class and you should review that material. In
particular, if you think one variable might be causally influencing the other that first
variable (the independent variable) must go along the top to define the columns in the
table. The dependent variable goes along the side to define the rows. We also discussed
the importance of looking at percentages in addition to the actual numbers in the table.
The procedure below shows you how to request a crosstab table from SPSS.

Enter into the Crosstabs menu with the commands Analyze / Descriptive / Crosstabs.
You’ll get a menu box like the one shown below, very similar to the menu boxes you saw
for Frequencies or Descriptives. Notice, though, that you select which variable will
define the rows and which will define the columns. The independent variable goes at the
top of the table so that should be the variable you use to define the columns.

In the example below I’ve asked for a table that has gender across the top and the
variable Social Interaction along the sides. I’m looking to see if gender influences
people’s desire for social interaction in leisure.

Main dialog box for Crosstabs

When working in the Crosstabs dialog box you can change your selections by clicking on
any variable on the right and then clicking the arrow to move that variable back to the
left. That clears the box so you can different variables for your analysis.

Once you select the variables for your table you need to tell SPSS what statistics you
want and what information you want to appear in each cell. You do this using the boxes
at the bottom of the Crosstabs menu.
The example below shows the dialog box for Crosstab Statistics. In this example I’ve
asked SPSS to compute Chi-Square and nothing else.

Dialog box for Crosstabs Statistics

I clicked on Continue from the above screen and returned to the main Crosstabs menu.
Then I selected Cells from the bottom of that screen and got the menu box shown below.
Here I’ve asked SPSS to display the actual count for each cell (how many people were in
that cell) as well as the column percentages. I asked for column percentages because of
the rule “Percentage down, compare across” which helps me analyze the data in the table
more easily.

Dialog box for Crosstabs Cells

I clicked on Continue from the above screen, then clicked on OK from the main
Crosstabs menu to execute this analysis. The results are shown below. Though this table
might look a bit different than those we worked on in class, it has labels for each column
and row and the cells show the actual count plus the percentages just like the class
examples.
 Output Window showing the Crosstabs table

The statistics from a crosstab analysis are shown below the crosstab table. SPSS
computes Chi square three different ways. Don’t let that confuse you; simply use the top
one (Pearson’s Chi-square). SPSS also computes the p-value (the “significance”) for
each Chi-square. We usually jump right to the p-value because it’s hard to interpret the
Chi-Square number. In the example below, the p-value for Pearson’s Chi-Square is
<0.001. This tells me that I can be fairly confident that there really is a relationship
between these two variables (with a 1 in a 1000 chance of being wrong when I say that).

Output for Crosstabs Statistics

III. CORRELATIONS

One other common statistic you might be interested in is a correlation. The true
correlation (called Pearson’s correlation coefficient) must be calculated on interval level
data (it cannot be used for nominal or ordinal variables). Researchers often assume that
Likert-like scales are interval level measurement so their data can be analyzed through
correlations.

To get to the menu for correlations, select Analyze / Correlate / Bivariate. The
“bivariate” simply means that you want the correlation between two variables (the other
options let you compute complex correlations between three or more variables). The
menu box is similar to the others you’ve seen in SPSS analyses. You select the variables
from the left and move them to the right to identify which variables you want correlated.
If you select more than two variables, SPSS computes the correlation between all
possible 2-way combinations of those variables. This main menu also lets you select the
type of correlation you want (typically you want Pearson’s correlation) and choose how
the p-values should be calculated (typically you want two-tailed tests). SPSS will also
flag the significant correlations with asterix if you ask for it (the box on the bottom left of
the menu).

Here is an example of the correlations menu. I’ve asked for the correlation between
answers to My leisure is boring and I’m pretty happy with myself. I was wondering if
people who are happy with themselves probably are less likely to be bored in their
leisure.

Dialog box for Correlations

From the above box I clicked on OK to execute the command. The results are below.

Output Window for Correlations

The output for correlations lists each of the variables in the correlation and tells you how
many valid cases there were with data on both of these variables (in the above example,
N=340). A correlation matrix always has 1.0 running along the diagonal (top left to
bottom right) because a variable correlates with itself at 1.0. SPSS shows both the top
right and the bottom left halves of this matrix; notice that they are identical and you only
need to look at the bottom left half of the matrix. If you’ve only included two variables
in your analysis, the correlation you are looking for is that bottom left cell in the output.

In the example above, these two variables correlated at –0.427. This number is negative,
like I expected, which means that people who are more happy with themselves are less
likely to find leisure boring. On a scale of zero to one, a value of –0.427 indicates a fairly
strong correlation between these two variables. The item marked Sig 2-tailed is the p-
value testing how confident you can be that this correlation isn’t a result of sampling
error, and the asterix is used to mark all p-values that are lower than 0.05. In the example
above, SPSS has determined that I can be fairly confident that this correlation would exist
in the population too, not just in my sample. (This calculation stems from complex
probability theory and is determined, in part, by how strong that correlation is and how
many cases I had in my analysis).