The data editor window has two tabs in the left bottom corner. Data view and variable view, the data view is where the variable data is entered. The variable view is used to define the variables.

Using SPSS, you can create your own data file or may wish to make minor edits to large data files.

The procedure for entering data into SPSS is as follows,

1. Click on File/New/Data

– You should see a blank data screen that looks like a spreadsheet

2. Click on the variable view tab at the bottom of data editor window.

• You need to define the variables that you will use, this include the name, type, width, decimal, label, value.

3. Enter the variable names in the “Names” columns in the order you want them(no space allowed in the name)

-click Row 1

4. Enter the variable type in the “type” column.

-Click the button on the right side of the Type cell to open the Variable Type dialog box

– check the box that corresponds to your data type.

5. Enter the variable labels in the “Label” column
6. Enter the value labels in the “Values” column.

– To do this you will need to click in the appropriate cell and then click in the little gray box on the right

7. Enter the missing values in the “Missing” column.

-To do this you will need to click in the appropriate cell and then click in the little gray box on the right

8. Now that you have defined the variables, click on the tab at the bottom called “Data View” and enter the data into the appropriate cells
9. Once you have entered the data, go back and check to make sure you didn’t make any data entry errors
10. Now you want to save your data, Click on “Save as”. The default is to save it as a SPSS data file with .sav as the extension