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2015;29[5]:138
Revisão Livro/Software
SPSS: a statistical software Kalyani Rajalingham1
1.BSc, MSc, GD, Medicine CR 1McGill University Department of Medicine Montreal, Quebec DATA DE RECEPÇÃO / RECEPTION date: 31/07/2015 data de aprovação / approval date: 07/08/2015
SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) is a statistical software package for analysis of data, especially for biological and medical data. It is in all probability one of the best softwares available to the scientific community. In fact, it is a software that deserves some attention to say the least. SPSS is equipped with functions to perform various computations, tests, and graphs with simplicity. Unlike R, another statistical software, SPSS does not require programming knowledge, and is as such not time consuming. Software packages like R requires time, and effort to write the code that can analyze a dataset, or produce a figure. SPSS, on the other hand, is a user friendly package. Onesample, two sample and paired t-test can be conducted. Parametric tests, non-parametric tests, correlation, and regression analyses as well as a large number of post-hoc tests are available to the user. Survival, and ROC curves can also be generated amongst many others. Normality, and homoscedasticity tests can be determined relatively sim-
ply. Data can be transformed, or even weighted. The descriptive statistics section lists values for all measures of central tendency, and dispersion; the latter also includes data about skew, and kurtosis. Another great feature is the grouping by factors. This implies can data can be generated by categorizing data into groups using the “Factor list.” For instance, testing drug efficiency, following data collection, can be done within a matter of minutes. Custom design of graphs is a unique feature that permits the user to create/design figures; the user has much freedom in customizing the graph to his/her liking. From boxplots, to error bar graphs to histograms can be generated amongst countless others (bar, line, area, piepolar, scatter, histogram, high-low, boxplot, and dual axis graphs). Axes can grouped, and labeled qualitatively, and quantitatively. Most books on statistical analysis have a subsection on how to carry the test out in SPSS. This software would be recommended to the scientific community.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. William K. and Rajaluxmy Rajalingham for reviewing..
CORRESPONdENcE: Kalyani Rajalingham 8518 Stuart Ave. Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3N 2S5
[email protected] 
