- Welcome
- Important notice
- About the author
- About this site
- Site guide + Search box
- Dedications
- Acknowledgments
- My personal pantheon (of the great and the good in survey research)
- Recent and planned activities
- Textbooks for Research Methods and Data Analysis
- 1: Survey Analysis Workshop (SPSS)
- 1a: Statistical concepts and methods
- 1b: Teaching with Survey Data
- 1c: Developing research projects using survey data
- 1d: Workshop and presentations for ASSESS (SPSS users in Europe)
- 2: Survey Research Practice
- 2a: Survey Research Methodology, Practice and Training
- 2b: Major survey series
- 3: Subjective Social Indicators (Quality of Life)
- 4: Survey Unit, Social Science Research Council (UK)
- 5a: Polytechnic of North London (1976-1992)
- 5b: Survey Research Unit (1978-1992)
- Village life in Normandy
- Contact
- Origins of the British Crime Survey
- British Crime Survey
Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: working with alien SPSS files
[New page 23 Oct 2014: last updated 14 Sep 2017]
[NB: Notes and commentaries below may arrive as pdf files in your download folder]
Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: working with alien SPSS files (pdf)
An alternative working title would have been: Sows' Ears and Silk Purses: working with other peoples’ SPSS files as a follow-up to Old Dog, Old Tricks, my 2006 presentation to ASSESS. Thought about using Old Dog, New Tricks, but it doesn’t carry the same sense of horror and fun.
Slide-shows covered recent work on other people’s files, including a live demo of Jon Peck’s Python code to move question numbers from the end to the beginning of variable labels and to change labels from UPPER to Mixed case text. Also included were some new tricks and demos of things I didn’t know SPSS would do until I tried. I haven’t used PowerPoint since York 2006, but I found [Alt][PrintScreen] and MS Snip incredibly useful for getting screenshots into Word, and they also copied easily into Ppt. The presentation ran SPSS live, drawing on my explorations of:
British Social Attitudes
Commentary on SPSS file for British Social Attitudes 2011 (pdf)
Notes on British Social Attitudes 2004 teaching data set (pdf) as used by Marsh and Elliott, 2008
(See also page British Social Attitudes which has links to later commentaries on the ease of use and understanding of SPSS saved files distributed by UKDS on page British Social Attitudes: Exploring the SPSS files and detailed accounts of my creation in 2016 of a cumulative mother fille for all waves 1983 to 2014 on page British Social Attitudes 1983 - 2016 : Cumulative SPSS file
Understanding Society
Commentary on Understanding Society 2010
NORC General Social Survey (GSS)
As of March 2016, the NORC GSS website has been completely revamped and is easier to navigate. Some of the content in the following commentaries may now be otiose.
Commentary on full NORC General Social Survey 2008
Commentary on subset of General Social Survey 2008 (as used by Sweet & Grace-Martin)
Commentary on GSS 2008 SPSS files for Babbie et al (as used by Babbie, Halley, Wagner & Zaino)
(UK) ONS National Well-being
[New page 2 May 2015]
ONS National Well-being
Commentary on Unrestricted Access Teaching Dataset (ONS Opinions Survey, Well‐Being Module
Data set and user guide from the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research, Manchester now renamed the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research, . This dataset (SN7146) contains a selection of variables from the April 2011 wave of the ONS Opinions Survey, Well-Being Module, April - August 2011 (SN 6893) which in turn is part of the regular government survey Opinions and Lifestyle Survey, run in various guises since 1990
(Restoration of) Relative Deprivation and Social Justice
[New page 2 May 2015]
Relative Deprivation and Social Justice
Book: W G Runciman Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (RKP 1966)
Relative Deprivation and Social Justice 1966 (UKDS SN 28)
(created 1975 by Dr Annette Scambler, Sociology, Surrey: fully restored 2014 by John Hall)
SN28 Commentary on Relative Deprivation and Social Justice
(This is a bit too long and I am going to break it up into smaller sections)
SN28 Appendix 1 - Download of original data from UKDS
SN28 Appendix 4 - Annette Scambler's 1975 version
SSRC Survey Unit Multi-purpose Social Survey (1975)
First ever such survey in UK (data set SN 680) on which my then research trainee, the late Cathie Marsh, cut her survey and SPSS teeth.
Commentary on Multi-purpose 1975
The above links are to introductions and critical commentaries (draft only at this stage) aimed at making the distributed data sets easier to understand and use, especially for newcomers to surveys and to SPSS. The commentaries are listed on my website pages Teaching with Survey Data and SPSS files and documentation used for tutorials and exercises.
Slide shows
This site can't play files in MS Office *. ppt format. You need to download them first:
Close Encounters slide-show 1: Prologue
Close Encounters slide-show 2: European Quality of Life Survey
Close Encounters slide-show 3: Understanding Society
Close Encounters slide-show 4: British Social Attitudes
Close Encounters slide-show 5: Odds, Sods and Epilogue
You can play them direct from academia.edu
Close Encounters slide-show 1: Prologue
Close Encounters slide-show 2: European Quality of Life Survey
Close Encounters slide-show 3: Understanding Society
Close Encounters slide-show 4: British Social Attitudes
Close Encounters slide-show 5: Odds, Sods and Epilogue
[NB: Notes and commentaries below may arrive as pdf files in your download folder]
Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: working with alien SPSS files (pdf)
An alternative working title would have been: Sows' Ears and Silk Purses: working with other peoples’ SPSS files as a follow-up to Old Dog, Old Tricks, my 2006 presentation to ASSESS. Thought about using Old Dog, New Tricks, but it doesn’t carry the same sense of horror and fun.
Slide-shows covered recent work on other people’s files, including a live demo of Jon Peck’s Python code to move question numbers from the end to the beginning of variable labels and to change labels from UPPER to Mixed case text. Also included were some new tricks and demos of things I didn’t know SPSS would do until I tried. I haven’t used PowerPoint since York 2006, but I found [Alt][PrintScreen] and MS Snip incredibly useful for getting screenshots into Word, and they also copied easily into Ppt. The presentation ran SPSS live, drawing on my explorations of:
British Social Attitudes
Commentary on SPSS file for British Social Attitudes 2011 (pdf)
Notes on British Social Attitudes 2004 teaching data set (pdf) as used by Marsh and Elliott, 2008
(See also page British Social Attitudes which has links to later commentaries on the ease of use and understanding of SPSS saved files distributed by UKDS on page British Social Attitudes: Exploring the SPSS files and detailed accounts of my creation in 2016 of a cumulative mother fille for all waves 1983 to 2014 on page British Social Attitudes 1983 - 2016 : Cumulative SPSS file
Understanding Society
Commentary on Understanding Society 2010
NORC General Social Survey (GSS)
As of March 2016, the NORC GSS website has been completely revamped and is easier to navigate. Some of the content in the following commentaries may now be otiose.
Commentary on full NORC General Social Survey 2008
Commentary on subset of General Social Survey 2008 (as used by Sweet & Grace-Martin)
Commentary on GSS 2008 SPSS files for Babbie et al (as used by Babbie, Halley, Wagner & Zaino)
(UK) ONS National Well-being
[New page 2 May 2015]
ONS National Well-being
Commentary on Unrestricted Access Teaching Dataset (ONS Opinions Survey, Well‐Being Module
Data set and user guide from the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research, Manchester now renamed the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research, . This dataset (SN7146) contains a selection of variables from the April 2011 wave of the ONS Opinions Survey, Well-Being Module, April - August 2011 (SN 6893) which in turn is part of the regular government survey Opinions and Lifestyle Survey, run in various guises since 1990
(Restoration of) Relative Deprivation and Social Justice
[New page 2 May 2015]
Relative Deprivation and Social Justice
Book: W G Runciman Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (RKP 1966)
Relative Deprivation and Social Justice 1966 (UKDS SN 28)
(created 1975 by Dr Annette Scambler, Sociology, Surrey: fully restored 2014 by John Hall)
SN28 Commentary on Relative Deprivation and Social Justice
(This is a bit too long and I am going to break it up into smaller sections)
SN28 Appendix 1 - Download of original data from UKDS
SN28 Appendix 4 - Annette Scambler's 1975 version
SSRC Survey Unit Multi-purpose Social Survey (1975)
First ever such survey in UK (data set SN 680) on which my then research trainee, the late Cathie Marsh, cut her survey and SPSS teeth.
Commentary on Multi-purpose 1975
The above links are to introductions and critical commentaries (draft only at this stage) aimed at making the distributed data sets easier to understand and use, especially for newcomers to surveys and to SPSS. The commentaries are listed on my website pages Teaching with Survey Data and SPSS files and documentation used for tutorials and exercises.
Slide shows
This site can't play files in MS Office *. ppt format. You need to download them first:
Close Encounters slide-show 1: Prologue
Close Encounters slide-show 2: European Quality of Life Survey
Close Encounters slide-show 3: Understanding Society
Close Encounters slide-show 4: British Social Attitudes
Close Encounters slide-show 5: Odds, Sods and Epilogue
You can play them direct from academia.edu
Close Encounters slide-show 1: Prologue
Close Encounters slide-show 2: European Quality of Life Survey
Close Encounters slide-show 3: Understanding Society
Close Encounters slide-show 4: British Social Attitudes
Close Encounters slide-show 5: Odds, Sods and Epilogue