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Welcome to what I hope you will find a valuable and interesting resource for researchers, students and others doing, or learning about, survey research and the analysis of survey data. You will find here a wealth of materials drawn from my 45 years not only of doing dozens of surveys myself (and advising and assisting on hundreds of others) but also of teaching research and data analysis methods, including intensive use (and teaching) of SPSS since 1972.
[Photo: Bar/Restaurant La Cale,
Blainville-sur-Mer (50) France, July 2010]
Site first published: 15 October 2009
Last updates/uploads: 6 February 2012
Hello everyone. I'm John Hall, previously Senior Research Fellow, Survey Unit, Social Science Research Council, (1970 - 76) and Principal Lecturer in Sociology and Unit Director, Survey Research Unit, Polytechnic of North London (1976 - 1992). I took early retirement in 1992 and came to live in Lower Normandy (France) in 1994, but am still actively involved in supporting social (survey) research.
The site has two main components:
Survey Analysis Workshop
contains learning materials based on the unique practice-oriented course (postgraduate, part-time, evening, hands-on ) which I designed and taught from 1976 until 1992. They consist of extensive entry-level tutorials (gentle, step-by-step, full colour screenshots at each step) on the use of SPSS to process and analyse data from questionnaire surveys. They are for use with SPSS for Windows and will work with all releases from 11 onwards. The examples on this site have been generated with releases 15, 18 and 19 (how are we poor tutors to keep up?) and use SPSS syntax (its English-like command language) in preference to the drop-down menus from the Graphic User Interface (GUI). However, many examples are also repeated using the menus. There is a full range of supporting materials (facsimile questionnaires, raw data sets, SPSS saved files) from my own surveys and from major survey series, as well as links to SPSS tutorials and useful materials available elsewhere via the web.
Survey Research in General
I have also uploaded a range of papers, reports and other documents (some not easily available, if at all) relating to the dozens of surveys in which I have been involved since 1965. These are mainly from my time at the SSRC Survey Unit (1970 - 1976, including extensive materials from the Quality of Life in Britain surveys) and at the Polytechnic of North London (1976 - 1992). I have also uploaded, with permission, a selection of (links to) useful websites and relevant articles and papers by others.
New materials are being added regularly, so apologies if some pages keep appearing and disappearing in the left pane. It shouldn't affect your use of the site, but I occasionally need to publish hidden pages to verify contents and correct functioning of associated links.
I'm currently engaged in a major overhaul of the appearance of some pages and in revising rewriting and updating tutorials from SPSS 15 to IBM SPSS 18 and 19 (they still all work with 15 and mostly with 11). This task is almost complete, but I'll try to keep disruption to a minimum.
[NB: All downloadable tutorials are set in 11-point Arial and optimised for printing on European A4 sheet size (297 x 210 mm). They are legible even if printed two pages to a sheet. Files prepared up to June 2011 are in *.doc format from Word 2003.
As of June 2011 I am using Word 2007 which can save files in genuine *.pdf format with fully functioning hyperlinks. These retain all original page formatting and are much quicker to display. They will gradually replace files in *.doc format]
I am extremely grateful to Terry Blom, without whose unstinting technical and engineering know-how, the site wouldn't exist at all.
[Photo: Bar/Restaurant La Cale,
Blainville-sur-Mer (50) France, July 2010]
Site first published: 15 October 2009
Last updates/uploads: 6 February 2012
Hello everyone. I'm John Hall, previously Senior Research Fellow, Survey Unit, Social Science Research Council, (1970 - 76) and Principal Lecturer in Sociology and Unit Director, Survey Research Unit, Polytechnic of North London (1976 - 1992). I took early retirement in 1992 and came to live in Lower Normandy (France) in 1994, but am still actively involved in supporting social (survey) research.
The site has two main components:
Survey Analysis Workshop
contains learning materials based on the unique practice-oriented course (postgraduate, part-time, evening, hands-on ) which I designed and taught from 1976 until 1992. They consist of extensive entry-level tutorials (gentle, step-by-step, full colour screenshots at each step) on the use of SPSS to process and analyse data from questionnaire surveys. They are for use with SPSS for Windows and will work with all releases from 11 onwards. The examples on this site have been generated with releases 15, 18 and 19 (how are we poor tutors to keep up?) and use SPSS syntax (its English-like command language) in preference to the drop-down menus from the Graphic User Interface (GUI). However, many examples are also repeated using the menus. There is a full range of supporting materials (facsimile questionnaires, raw data sets, SPSS saved files) from my own surveys and from major survey series, as well as links to SPSS tutorials and useful materials available elsewhere via the web.
Survey Research in General
I have also uploaded a range of papers, reports and other documents (some not easily available, if at all) relating to the dozens of surveys in which I have been involved since 1965. These are mainly from my time at the SSRC Survey Unit (1970 - 1976, including extensive materials from the Quality of Life in Britain surveys) and at the Polytechnic of North London (1976 - 1992). I have also uploaded, with permission, a selection of (links to) useful websites and relevant articles and papers by others.
New materials are being added regularly, so apologies if some pages keep appearing and disappearing in the left pane. It shouldn't affect your use of the site, but I occasionally need to publish hidden pages to verify contents and correct functioning of associated links.
I'm currently engaged in a major overhaul of the appearance of some pages and in revising rewriting and updating tutorials from SPSS 15 to IBM SPSS 18 and 19 (they still all work with 15 and mostly with 11). This task is almost complete, but I'll try to keep disruption to a minimum.
[NB: All downloadable tutorials are set in 11-point Arial and optimised for printing on European A4 sheet size (297 x 210 mm). They are legible even if printed two pages to a sheet. Files prepared up to June 2011 are in *.doc format from Word 2003.
As of June 2011 I am using Word 2007 which can save files in genuine *.pdf format with fully functioning hyperlinks. These retain all original page formatting and are much quicker to display. They will gradually replace files in *.doc format]
I am extremely grateful to Terry Blom, without whose unstinting technical and engineering know-how, the site wouldn't exist at all.
