Contains a description of each of the variables in your database. Let’s look at Variable View by clicking on that tab.

Your screen should now look like this:

Variable View holds ten columns of information about each variable in the database.

Name: abbreviated name of the variable

Data Type: if you click on the right hand of the box you will find a drop list of options. Most of the time you will most likely use “numeric” for your projects. If you want to add text, change this to “string".

Width: the number of digits or characters possible for the variable. For example, if you had 15 possible responses, you would need to have a width of 2 (one for the tens’ place and another for the ones’ place).

Decimals: the number of decimal places that the variable requires

Labels: a brief description or label for your variable

Values: the values you have assigned to the labels (for example, 1=yes, 2=no, 8= K, 9=NA

Missing: values designated as missing

Columns: width of Column in Data View refers to the number of letters in the variable name. The default is ‘8’ which should be sufficient for most of your work.

Align: alignment of data in Data View: right, left or center. The default is ‘right’.

Measure: level of measurement: Nominal, Ordinal, Scale (SPSS designates both Interval and Ratio measures as Scale). Be aware: the default is ‘Scale’ so if you have ordinal or nominal variables you will need to change these.