I am having a relatively easy time with these SPSS worksheets and the class is not relatively difficult yet, but I am nervous for the end of this course. I don’t think that I will be able to conduct the online analysis or sort variables or even use SPSS without help. I doubt I’ll be able to retain the information that we have been learning, especially not without the use of the workbook. If asked to collapse an interval level variable with visual binning or analysis comparative means, I can do it with ease when I have the instructions in front of me, but without those I don’t think I will be able to. This is incredibly frustrating because I really enjoy this work (when I have help), but computers still confuse me completely and I am frustrated that I will lose the information that I have learned.

So we are finally at midterms, it’s pretty weird that my time at VMI is nearing to an end. That being said, I genuinely enjoy learning in this class. I think that the fact that I started this semester knowing nothing about computers and now I have been doing fairly well on the SPSS stuff (even if it is quite literally laid out in the workbook for me) is impressive. I like that I have been able to teach myself and there is nothing quite as rewarding as progressing through my work and being proud of how far I’ve come. That being said, I wish we talked more about our work in class and more about how to apply this to our capstones. But I am assuming that we will go over that as deadlines get a little closer. If not, I’ll come and ask about it more.

Last week we worked on Worksheet #3 in Pollock’s SPSS book. In Chapter 3 we worked on Recoding, meaning we can now create a new variable that collapses respondents into multiple categories. We did this by running Frequencies, transforming the old variables into new variables. We also learned that we can do this on multiple different kinds of variables like Categorical and Interval-level variables. However, for collapsing interval-level variables, SPSS’s more obscure Visual Binning procedure provides an attractive alternative to recoding. Chapter 3 also shows readers how to use Compute to create new variables.

This week, we worked on Chapter #4, Making Comparisons. Although the logic of comparison is always the same, the appropriate method depends on the levels of measurement of the independent and dependent variables. This chapter shows readers how to address two common hypothesis-testing situations: those in which both the independent and dependent variables are categorical and those in which the independent variable is categorical and the dependent variable is interval level. We used line charts and bar charts while finding the data which was super helpful because in enabled me to be able to understand the data a little bit easier. I felt like I had a really good grasp on this chapter overall and liked comparing variables.

HR: Pollock Chapters 3 and 4

Worksheet #2 went a lot more smoothly than Worksheet #1, mostly because I know how to work the computer now. This chapter focused on Descriptive Statistics. Descriptive statistics reveal two attributes of a variable: its typical variable (central tendency) and its spread (degree of variation). This chapter also focused a lot on the mean, median, mode, and skewness of variables. The mode is the most common value of the variable, and its used for nominal-level. The median is used for ordinal-level variables, those whose categories can be ranked, its the value of the variable that divides the cases into two equal-size groups. The mean is the sum of all values divided by the number of cases, used for interval-level variables (along with mode and median).