Advanced Statistics Software Question and Answer Sessions

    ITS offers Advanced Question and Answer (Q&A) sessions on request for SPSS and SAS software on all supported platforms. Discussion focus on programming, point-and-click and data manipulation. The workshops are not designed to deal with statistical issues or problems.

    Feedback from the beginning workshops indicates that there is a need for the discussion of advanced topics, but formal workshops have always been less than effective because the needs of advanced users vary so widely. The Q&A format hopefully will address these needs.

    This page will contain the questions submitted in advance for each workshop session, so that attendees can see what will be covered. (Other questions also will be welcome during the sessions themselves, and do not need to be submitted prior to the meeting time.) As the workshops progress, questions and topics from past sessions also will be posted here, so that USC statistics software users can see some of the advanced topics that the community considers important.

    Questions may be submitted by prospective attendees by sending eMail to the instructor, <gpjones@usc.edu>

    Times and locations of the Q&A sessions can be seen at the ITS Statistics Software Workshops Web Page: 

      www.usc.edu/its/doc/statistics/help/classes/

    and at the Adventures in Education information site: 

      www.usc.edu/libraries/adventures/

    Similar advanced statistics software workshops also can be requested by groups of five or more USC students, faculty and/or staff, and can be tailored to the needs of those requesting. For details, please see 

      www.usc.edu/its/doc/statistics/help/classes/requests.shtml

    Advanced SPSS Q&A

      • no topics submitted as yet
        workshop will be held even if no advance topics are submitted

    Advanced SAS Q&A

      • SAS Macros
        other topics always welcome

    Topics Covered in Previous Q&A Workshops
    (These topics can be covered again if attendees desire)

      SPSS

      • how to calculate a percentage within subjects
      • how to assign subjects to quartile groups
      • creating date values from separate year, month and day variables
      • recoding (collapsing) categorical alphanumeric (string) data
      • rearranging data from paired-sample (e.g., pre-post) to independent sample (two groups in one column) for T-Test
      • use of syntax (SPSS programming)
      • using AGGREGATE to output a SUM and COUNT by a particular variable (e.g., YEAR), then calculate an average, and merge the average values back to the original data
      • reading text data (words) into an SPSS Active File (Data Window)
      • using value labels
      • creating dummy variables and using them in a regression
      • merging SPSS *.sav files (concatenation and match-merging)

      SAS

      • labeling variables (LABEL statement) and values (PROC FORMAT)
      • recoding values
      • using PROCs (e.g., PROC FREQ) to create summary SAS Data Sets
      • IF ... THEN and IF ... THEN DO statements
      • merging data
      • improving ASCII printed output with the FORMCHAR option
      • PROC PRINTTO -- redirecting large output to a file with enough space
      • reconfiguring data prior to a merge
      • subsetting data to include only desired observations
      • combining multiple observations into one (e.g., combining separate family member observations into a single family observation structure)
      • using Excel (*.xls) files in SAS (including SAS for UNIX)
      • moving SAS data from Windows to UNIX (for example) using transport files
      • SAS macros