SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Science) is software that takes raw data and manipulates them into new statistics that can later be used as predictors. SPSS performs the calculations but the raw data and what calculations need to be performed is selected by the organizations.
SPSS can take data from almost any type of file and use them to generate tabulated reports, charts, and plots of distributions and trends, descriptive statistics, and conduct complex statistical analyses.
The practical application of the software is to predict the future. Predictive models are used on business data to identify both opportunities and risk.
Some of the functionalities of SPSS include Data transformations, Data Examination, Descriptive Statistics, Contingency tables, Reliability tests, Correlation, and Forecasting.
SPSS Statistics comes in the form of a base system, but one can acquire additional modules to add on to that system. The following are some of the additional modules that can be added to SPSS.
Amos – Amos is an interactive interface that can use to build structural equation models.
Direct Marketing – The Direct Marketing module offers a set of operations that are designed to make direct marketing campaign more effective. You can use them to identify demographics, determine purchasing patterns, and find other useful characteristics that may be hidden inside the data.
Missing Values – The SPSS Missing Value Analysis add-on can let companies know in what way the pattern of missing values is affecting the final results.
Data Collection Data Entry – This is a combination of SPSS Data Collection Author and SPSS Data Collection Interviewer. This combination makes it possible for organizations to create professional surveys quickly and then capture data efficiently.
Regression – The SPSS Regression add-on plugs directly into the SPSS base software and provides a larger selection of statistical analysis methods. It includes some additional diagnostic capabilities.
