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A quick advertisement for a pair of statistics and data management courses to be run by the new statistical consultancy unit at the Institute of Work Psychology, University of Sheffield, on Monday 16th June and Tuesday 17th June, 2008: - Monday 16th June, 2008: Data management using SPSS syntax - Tuesday 17th June, 2008: Multi-level Modelling using SPSS Each course costs £250, but if you attend both you get a 50 pound discount Details of the courses are given below: for further information and to book a place, go to http://www.offbeat.group.shef.ac.uk/FIO/trainingcourses.htm ** Course details are as follows: ** *-|- Monday 16th June, 2008: Data management using SPSS syntax -|- 9.45am to 5.15pm at the University of Sheffield * -|- Who is the course aimed at? This course is aimed at a very wide audience, namely anyone who ever has to handle data using SPSS! There are very few grey areas in managing data - your data is either accurate or it is not. And if it is not, then it is more than likely that the results from your analysis of it will be incorrect too. Learn to improve your data managment skills and hence create more time for the more interesting parts of a study i.e. the analysis of it, safe in the knowledge that you are working from an accurate, fully documented data set. Using the SPSS syntax language to import, organise and manipulate your data is substantially more efficient time-wise than using the menus, and has the dual advantages of simple repeatability and of providing an audit trail for your work. Course examples and data sets will largely come from survey data, but the skills learned are applicable and widely transferable to an incredibly wide variety of scenarios. -|- Course level: Whilst some previous experience of using SPSS via the menus (i.e. point and click) is expected, no previous experience in using the SPSS syntax language is required. -|- Course content and aims: The course will cover the following topics: - Starting with syntax - why use SPSS syntax, the bsics of writing and running syntax; determining when your command runs - Some simple SPSS commands - opening and saving files, describing data via frequencies, descriptives and crosstabs - Reading data into SPSS from other formats - handling text format, Excel format data, - Defining and documenting data, variable names, variable labels, value labels, missing value, formatting data - Creating new variables - recoding, computing, count, performing calculations on subsets via DO IF - END IF, making multiple calculations using DO REPEAT loops - Manipulating cases - selecting subsets of data for analysis, filtering files, splitting files, sorting cases - Manipulating files - aggregating files, restructuring files, matching files, adding cases, updating files - Data Management: a worked example - best practice for creating and managing a complex data set -|- Course format: The course will take the form of a mixture of teaching via examples worked through by the trainer on real data sets which participants can follow, exercises to practice the skills just learned, and a few short demonstrations of the further capabilities of SPSS syntax. You will also receive a coursebook containg all the notes and worked examples, providing an easy reference and reminder for the techniques you have learned. With a maximum of 16 people on the course there will be plenty of scope and time for answering questions. -|- Course schedule: The course will start at 9.45am, with a lunch break from 1pm-2pm, and short coffee breaks at 11.30am and 3.30pm. It will finish at around 5pm, though I will be willing to stay on for a while after this and to answer questions pertinent to participants' own data sets or any other SPSS syntax based queries you may have. -|- For further information and to book a place, go to http://www.offbeat.group.shef.ac.uk/FIO/trainingcourses.htm *-|- Tuesday 17th June, 2008: Multi-level Modelling using SPSS -|- 9.45am to 5.15pm at the University of Sheffield * -|- Who is the course aimed at? This course is aimed at two distinct groups. It is primarily designed as a beginners' course in multi-level modelling (AKA Hierarchical Linear Modelling), for those who face the challenge of working with multi-level data sets and want to be able to analyse them in the most powerful and accurate way. However it should also appeal to those with a little experience of multi-level modelling using other specialist packages who now want to learn how to run such models in SPSS using the MIXED MODELS menu and commands. -|- Course level: A reasonable working knowledge of multiple regression and some previous experience of using SPSS to perform statistical analysis is expected. No previous experience of multi-level modelling will be assumed. -|- Course content and aims: The course will cover the following topics: - Introduction to multi-level data - what it is and why it requires special treatment - Restructuring Data in preparation for multi-level modelling - What is a multi-level model? - Building and fitting a multi-level model in SPSS - Further issues in multi-level modelling: centering, sample size and scaling - Advanced multi-level models: analysing longitudinal data and cross-sectional data using multi-level modelling in SPSS -|- Course format: The course comprises of a mixture of short lectures on the basic theory behind multi-level models, teaching via examples worked through by the trainer on real data sets which participants can follow, and exercises to practice the skills just learned. You will also receive a coursebook containing all the notes and worked examples, providing an easy reference and reminder for the techniques you have learned. With a maximum of 16 people on the course there will be plenty of scope and time for answering questions. -|- Course schedule: The course will start at 9.45am, with a lunch break from 1pm-2pm, and short coffee breaks at 11.30am and 3.30pm. It will finish at around 5pm, though I will be willing to stay on for a while after this and to answer questions pertinent to participants' own data sets. -|- For further information and to book a place, go to http://www.offbeat.group.shef.ac.uk/FIO/trainingcourses.htm *************************************** www.figureitout.org.uk