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


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