A frequency table shows the distribution of observations based on the options in a variable. Frequency tables are helpful to understand which options occur more or less often in the dataset. This is helpful for getting a better understanding of each variable and deciding if variables need to be recoded or not. There is no formula for a frequency table since it reports the count of each option in a variable.
FREQUENCIES VARIABLES=language
/STATISTICS= RANGE MEAN MEDIAN MODE.
The command is FREQUENCIES of the VARIABLES, we are including only one in this example, language. Below the command is our subcommand /STATISTICS where we are telling SPSS to calculate the RANGE, MEAN, MEDIAN, and MODE of the variable language. This is neat feature of SPSS where we can integrate descriptive statistics when running a frequency table.
Output
A
The first output chart, “Statistics”, shows us the number of observations (N) and the descriptive statistics (Mean, Median, Mode, and Range) we specified with our subcommand of the variable “language”.
SPSS reports the “Valid” sample size which is the number of observations in the dataset that has data for the variable “language”.
“Missing” is the number of observations that do not have data for the variable “language” and are coded as missing. This is helpful to understand how many observations there are in each analysis that we will run.
Next, SPSS shows the average of all valid observation values in the “Mean” row of 1.37. The middle option of the observations is coded with a value of 1.00. The most common option selected for the “language” variable is 1. The range of values among the observations is 2.
B
The second output chart, “language”, shows us the frequency distribution of the variable.
Each row in the chart is an option that respondents could have selected during data collection. We can see the options “English”, “French”, and “Other” and the total number of observations in this analysis (note: it is the same 7304 as in Valid observations in the first chart). SPSS always presents options that are coded from the smallest number the to greatest, so we know that “English” is coded with a numerical value of “1”, “French" is coded as “2”, and “Other” is “3”, which is helpful for interpreting the descriptive statistics in A
We can see most, 5,716 observations, selected “English” as their language which is supported by the mode equal to 1. The least commonly reported option is “French” with 497 observations and 1,091 observations selecting “Other”.
In the next two columns to the right, SPSS shows us the “Percent” of the entire dataset including missing observations and “Valid Percent” that only include non-missing observations.
The column furthest to the right, “Cumulative Percent” is the percentage of each option and the option above it. Cumulative presents are used to determine cutoffs for quartiles.
