Research Methods Handbook (Bueno Para Estadistica Y Spss)

1、1 research methods & statistics handbook first term dr. alison, mr. brent snook 2 table of contents section i: introduction.3 section ii: practicals.11 section iii: extra material.38 appendix: basic statistics .60 timetable.70 3 section i introduction 4 course instructors the instructors for this ye

2、ar will be, brent snook (room 1.79), x, y & z. our offices are on the second floor of the eleanor rathbone building. computing systems the university computing services help desk (brownlow hill phone extension 44567) has a full advice and backup service should you need any information and help. comp

3、uting environments communication between computers and ourselves is mediated by operating systems that allow us to access the various programmes and packages in the university. the most usual environment, as the systems are known, is windows. this is controlled mainly through pointing and clicking t

4、he mouse at various icons on the screen. another environment is unix, which is similar to ms dos in that the commands are typed rather than selected with the mouse. the reason behind discussing these different environments is simply that the various packages we will be using are stored in these envi

5、ronments. computers and networks most computers act both as stand-alone machines, capable of independent use, and as networked machines, which rely on a central server. generally speaking, we in psychology use networked machines for several reasons. three main networks are used to access the package

6、s on the different environments: the pc managed network service, the nt managed network and the unix system. the three networks access to the networks is gained by logging on with your user name and password. you then have access to your own personal disk space (m: drive) at a central location that

7、only you can read. you have separate disk space for both windows 2000 and unix, so you can have two separate passwords to increase security, though your user name remains the same. at the end of a session, you must always logoff. usually, when a computer is booted you have the option to go on window

8、s 2000. once on the network, you are in the ms dos environment and can then use windows or unix. computer terminals virtually all computers upstairs in psychology and in the eleanor rathbone teaching centre (ertc) are networked to windows 2000. also, on the first floor in psychology is another suite

9、 of computers in the eleanor rathbone data centre 5 (erdc). there is a printer in there which you should use in preference to the ones in the department, though computing services doesnt look kindly on people sending huge printouts to their printers. installing applications there are a number of app

10、lications you need to install onto your account. on your screen you should have an icon labelled mnts applications. double click on this icon. now double click on all and you should get a screen full of icons. these are all of the possible applications that you can install onto your account. each ap

11、plication is installed by simply double clicking on the application icon. install the following applications: 1. mulberry (e-mail) 2. spss (version 10) 3. stanford graphics (on l:invpsy) 4. microsoft office (word, excel) 5. ws_ftp 6. netterm 7. br journey planner 8. the various mds packages (lifa200

12、0, unix ssa, msa, posa) 9. geographic packages (dragnet) within the limited timeframe, the purpose is to familiarise you with the software that is available and to encourage you to start using it. registering on windows 2000 computing services have all their documentation accessible through the worl

13、d wide web. you can print off any of the documents once you set up the appropriate printer. the computing services handout will take you through all the basics of windows 2000 including registering and changing your password. to register on windows 2000, you can go to any computer terminal. there sh

14、ould be a windows 2000 login screen. type the word register in the username box and follow the instructions. setting up the erdc printer you have the capability to print on a local printer (a printer that is actually attached to your machine) or a network printer (a printer which is attached to the

15、network). since we dont have enough printers for everyone it will be necessary to attach to a network printer. the printer which is probably most convenient is the one found in the eleanor rathbone data centre. the network printer queue for this printer is erdc-queue. 6 your are not restricted to ju

16、st this printer but it is the closest and it is reserved for postgraduate students studying in the eleanor rathbone building. to connect to one of the universitys networked printers you need to do the following: from the start menu choose settings and printers. doubleclick on add printer. highlight

17、the option network printer server and click on next. double-click on netware network. double-click on novell directory services. doubleclick on liv. doubleclick on o=liv. scroll down the list of options until you see ou=print-queues doubleclick on this option. from the list detailed in figure 1, sel

18、ect the required printer queue and double click on it (in this case, erdc-queue). choose ok to install the required printer driver on your local machine. from the list illustrated in figure 1, select the required printer manufacturer and then select the printer from the list available (it should be

19、an hp laserjet 4si/4si mx ps). click on ok. if this is the first time you have installed this particular type of printer then you will be asked for the location of the files to install. replace the line d:i386 (this might say a:i386) in the box copy files from with the path line v:nt40i386 and click

20、 on ok. after a few seconds you will be asked if you wish to make this your default printer. click on yes. click on next. you will then receive a message that your printer has been successfully installed. click on finish. 7 the printer driver will now be installed and connected to the specified prin

21、ter queue. remember, once you have connected and installed a network printer driver, you may need to check the printer settings to ensure that the settings such as paper size and duplex printing are correct. for further information, please see configuring the printer settings (on the computing servi

22、ces web page). using unix a lot of your time this year may be spent in unix. we will go into more detail about this system in the section on unix. three versions of the mds procedures (ssa, msa & posa) are on unix. double click the netterm icon. login with the same username as the pcmns. your passwo

23、rd is listed on the form computing services sent you. you can change the password by typing in “passwd”. the versions of the mds packages on the mainframe have a number of advantages over the two non-windows pc versions. they are basically more powerful and therefore more effective. a second feature

24、 is flexibility. in comparison to the mainframe ssa, shyessa (pc package) has only two choices of measures of association - pearsons and guttmans mu. while pap offers the widest variety of measures, the copy we have also tends to be the one that doesnt work. well go into the pc packages in more deta

25、il at a later date. running the mainframe packages is fairly straight forward, but there are actually four parts to the whole process - preparing your data, uploading/downloading, using the unix system itself, using the ned editor and running (in this case) the ssa. the ssa package has an option for

26、 reading data as freefields (any space between numbers indicates separate variables) for unix ssa, we can leave the data file as is. for msa and posa, the fields must be fixed, so: a) you dont want any spaces in your rows b) you need to have each score for each variable to start in the same column,

27、otherwise, when the mds programs read your data file, they wont be reading the variables properly - you tell the computer where each cases score for each variable is located by indicating the columns that variable occupies. both of these will become apparent when we get to running the ssa. a simple

28、example: 12 42 131213 13122 71111 in this case, the second variable actually takes up three columns, but, obviously, the computer does not stick a 0 in front of a score like 42 - thats your job. the same holds true for the third variable, which requires two columns as the score are over 9. 8 the cor

29、rect version of the two lines of data, with 0s added and spaces removed should be: 12042131213where columns 1-2 are variable 1, columns 3-5 are variable 2 and so on. after correcting the data, you then save the file again, making sure that it is still being saved in the generic ascii fo

30、rmat. uploading/downloading files the best way to upload (transfer files from the pc/nt managed network to the mainframe) or download (vice versa) is to use the ws-ftp application (in the comms window). this is a simple package to use. 1) when you first start it up, a window comes up asking for info

31、rmation about a host - this is the location youll be accessing outside of the pc to transfer information. under host name type “unix.” under host type, select the option “unix (standard).” under userid put your user name. under password enter your unix password. 2) the format is simple. on the left-

32、hand side is the local host, through which you can change between directories and drives. the right-hand side is your remote host (unix account), which also has directories you can move through. at the very top of each, your current drives/directories are listed. to transfer a file up, you select it

33、 and hit the right arrow. to transfer down, you hit the left button. the only trick is to make sure you have it set up for the right receiving directory, e.g. selecting the winword directory on your m: drive to receive the results file from an msa that youve run. so, locate the coding.dat data file

34、and move it from the m: drive to your unix account. 3) when youve finished, hit the exit button. the unix operating system imagine that unix is set up like the file manager in windows, but that you have to type in commands rather than click the mouse to move up and down directories, copy files, dele

35、te files and so on. when you first login in, the info on the left of the dollar sign prompt indicates the user, the particular machine youre on (in brackets) and what directory you are in - from left to right. remember that unix is case sensitive - an f is not the same thing as an f. i find it very

36、useful to start all directories with a capital letter and files with a lower case one to separate them. the first thing to know is how to find help. this is done through the “man” command. if you know the particular command you want help for, just type “man command”. if you have an idea as to what t

37、ype of action you want the computer to carry out, but dont know the specific command, type man -k keyword where the keyword is something related to the command, e.g. password, to get a list of commands with something to do with passwords. 9 here is a short list of unix commands: cp directory/filenam

38、e newfilename- copies a file rm filename- deletes a file mv filename directory - moves a file/renames a file ls - lists the contents of the current directory cd directory - change directory (note that cd . moves you up one directory) mkdir directoryname - creates a directory rmdir directoryname - re

39、moves a directory ned filename - activates the ned editor pine - e-mail editor gopher - info source tin - newsgroups reader note that * is a wildcard character, just like in windows, for selecting multiple files for commands. all of this information is available in more detail on the www. the ned ed

40、itor i mentioned this before (briefly), but i thought id go into this in more detail, as its a useful tool for editing files when you are on unix. all of these details are in the document on the ned editor on the computing services on-line documentation, btw. essentially, its a crude word processor,

41、 where all the function keys have various.functions.as do shift-function keys. none of this silly bolding or italics, no sir. you can type, you can move your cursor around and you can find and replace. word processing for real men. anyway, on to the lesson. to start up the ned editor, you have to ed

42、it a file on the unix account. you do the latter by typing ned filename, so choose any filename and open the ned editor. a screen will come up with a brownish banner along the bottom listing the various function key options. all the basic keys operate like in word: arrow keys move the cursor around,

43、 the home key moves to the start of the line, and end to the end. page up/down are also the same. as are insert/typeover, delete, backspace and so on. right, now type out everything from “i mentioned this.” on to right here. hit the f1 key, to get info on one of the displayed topics, move the cursor

44、 to it and hit enter. for a function key, hit that key. ctrl-g exits help. right, position your cursor at the start of the third line from the bottom, then hit the f2 key - a new line. now hit f9, which will delete the line you just created. now hit shft-f9, and the line comes back. right, now hit t

45、he f4 key to mark the start location for cutting/copying and pasting. move the cursor somewhere on the next couple of lines then hit f6. move to the end of the document and hit enter a couple of times, then hit f5. all the text between the marking point and the cursor is copied to the new cursor loc

46、ation. the same process is carried out for cutting text, but you hit shft- f6 instead of f6. 10 to insert text from another file, hit shft-f7. ned will ask for the filename, the text of which will be inserted wherever youre put the cursor. shft-f4 saves the file, while shft-f3 saves the file and exi

47、ts. f3 quits without saving changes. however, the most important feature of ned for data files that youve uploaded is the replace feature (f8). with this, you can change 1s to 0s and so on. so, lets change the letter “e” to “i.” move to the top left of the document. hit f8, then type the letter “e”

48、dont hit enter now. hit f8 again, and type “i.” hit f8 one more time. youll be prompted to make a choice about the first “e.” if you hit the y key, it will change it, n will make the computer jump to the next occurrence. a ! will cause ned to make all possible changes. youll find this handy for chan

49、ging numbers prior to doing analyses. for example, changing 0s to 1s and 1s to 2s. 11 section ii practicals 12 week 1: thursday october 3th introduction to spss spss is the primary package for running any statistical procedures outside of the mds packages. in addition to providing outputs for variou

50、s analyses, spss allows the user to manipulate the data in a variety of ways and to produce various graphs and figures that can be added into documents. in this practical, you will be asked to open and search through a data matrix, and enter and code data. the procedure for the exercises in this pra

51、ctical involves going through the steps for each analysis using the data file family.sav. where is family.sav? the first thing you must do is copy family.sav from the n: drive on your computer to the m: drive (which is your own personal account). to do this you must create a folder on your m: drive

52、into which the family.sav file will go. you should be looking at a screen with a number of icons on it. in the top left-hand corner is an icon called my computer. double-click on this icon. find the m: drive and double-click on it. you should now see a window containing a number of folders. go to fi

53、le, then new and choose folder. a new folder should appear in the bottom of the window labelled new folder. call your new folder survey and enter. after you have done this, go to file and then close. now, within the same window double-click on your n: drive. within that drive you will see a folder w

54、ith title spssegs (standing for spss example files). double-click on this folder. within this folder there is a file labelled family.sav. this is the file you want to copy into your survey folder on your m: drive. so, single click on family.sav and go to edit and then copy. go back to your m: drive

55、by shutting down the n: drive. (click on the x in the right hand corner of your n: drive window). double-click on your m: drive and double- click on the folder survey. survey should be empty. go to edit and then paste. now you should see the file family.sav. exploring the data editor window start sp

56、ss for windows by double-clicking on the spss icon. once the program has been opened a window will appear in the middle of the screen with a number of options to choose from. you want to select open an existing data source. go to the directory survey in your m: drive. find the file family.sav and do

57、uble- click on it. the values from the family.sav file should now appear in the data editor window. click on the middle button in the top right hand corner of the window to maximise the size of the window. once the file is open you will see two sheets at the bottom of the window. one is labelled dat

58、a view and the other is labelled 13 variable view. you want to stay on the data view sheet. click on the value labels (in bold rectangle below) button on your tool bar (it is 2nd from the right). this will toggle between value labels (numeric and string (words). scroll through the data to answer the

59、 following questions: 1. what is the name of the last variable in the data matrix? 2. what is the case number of the last case? 3. what is the value of idnum for the last case? 4. what is roberts date of birth? 5. what is jacks marital status? if you click on a cell when value labels are displayed i

60、n the data view window a scroll bar will appear to provide an indication of the options (variable labels) used in the coding framework. using this feature, please answer the following questions: what are the labels for car? what are they for mortgate? what are they for name? is there a problem with