ABSTRACT
Statistical software allows researchers to quickly define the variables and values assigned to different levels of each variable. IBM SPSS, SAS, and other spreadsheet-based statistical software packages have revolutionized the use of statistics in all branches of the social sciences, including public administration, public policy, and political science. In addition, packages such as IBM SPSS allow the researcher to quickly compute new variables from combinations of old variables, edit a large data set, and recode or transform mathematical measurements. The researcher can save all calculations and operations in various output files at any time during the data processing session. The basic package allows the researcher to calculate and display all commonly used descriptive statistics, produce a variety of tables, charts and graphs, and carry out a limited number of multivariate tests. It is able to process an extensive array of one and two-variable hypothesis tests, association tests, and single and multiple regression analyses.
