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A Review of Software Tools For Quantitative Data Analysis

This document reviews three main software tools used for quantitative data analysis: Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS), STATA, and SAS. SPSS is the most popular and uses a user-friendly interface to perform various statistical analyses and generate visualizations. STATA also uses point-and-click and command syntax and centers analysis around four windows. SAS is more powerful for complex, advanced analyses but requires knowledge of its programming syntax.

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154 views2 pages

A Review of Software Tools For Quantitative Data Analysis

This document reviews three main software tools used for quantitative data analysis: Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS), STATA, and SAS. SPSS is the most popular and uses a user-friendly interface to perform various statistical analyses and generate visualizations. STATA also uses point-and-click and command syntax and centers analysis around four windows. SAS is more powerful for complex, advanced analyses but requires knowledge of its programming syntax.

Uploaded by

mira frias
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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A Review of Software Tools for

Quantitative Data Analysis

By: Ashley Crossman


Updated February 04, 2018

If you're a  sociology student or budding social scientist and have started to work with
quantitative (statistical) data, analytic software will be very useful to you. These
programs force researchers to organize and clean her data and offer pre-programmed
commands that allow everything from very basic to quite advanced forms of
statistical analysis. They even offer useful visualizations that will be useful as you seek to
interpret your data, and that you may wish to use when presenting it to others.

There are many programs on the market, but unfortunately, they are quite
expensive to purchase. The good news for students and faculty is that most
universities have licenses for at least one program which students and professors
can use. In addition, most programs offer a free, pared-down version of the full
software package which will often suffice.

Here's a review of the three main programs that quantitative social scientists use.

Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS)

SPSS is the most popular quantitative analysis software program used by social
scientists. Made and sold by IBM, it is comprehensive, flexible, and can be used
with almost any type of data file. However, its especially useful for
analyzing large-scale survey data. It can be used to generate tabulated reports,
charts, and plots of distributions and trends, as well as generate descriptive
statistics such as means, medians, modes and frequencies in addition to more
complex statistical analyses like regression models.

SPSS provides a user interface that makes it easy and intuitive for all levels of
users. With menus and dialogue boxes, you can perform analyses without having
to write command syntax, like in other programs. It is also simple and easy to
enter and edit data directly into the program. There are a few drawbacks,
however, which might not make it the best program for some researchers.
For example, there is a limit on the number of cases you can analyze. It is also
difficult to account for weights, strata and group effects with SPSS.

STATA

STATA is an interactive data analysis program that runs on a variety of platforms.


It can be used for both simple and complex statistical analyses. STATA uses a
point-and-click interface as well as command syntax, which makes it easy to use.
STATA also make it simple to generate graphs and plots of data and results.

Analysis in STATA is centered around four windows: the command window,


review window, result window and variable window. Analysis commands are
entered into the command window and the review window records those
commands. The variables window lists the variables that are available in the
current data set along with the variable labels, and the results appear in the
results window.

SAS

SAS, short for Statistical Analysis System, is also used by many businesses; in
addition to statistical analysis, it also allows programmers to perform report
writing, graphics, business planning, forecasting, quality improvement, project
management and more. SAS is a great program for the intermediate and
advanced user because it is very powerful; it can be used with extremely large
datasets and can perform complex and advanced analyses.

SAS is good for analyses that require you to take into account weights, strata or
groups. Unlike SPSS and STATA, SAS is run largely by programming syntax
rather than point-and-click menus, so some knowledge of the programming
language is required.

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