Activity 10.2
Accessing Data for Secondary Analysis

1. Using your browser to go to the World Wide Web, locate SDA: Survey Documentation and Analysis.
2. Examine the codebooks for the data sets located in the archive.
3. Choose one of the data sets to use for this activity (we recommend GSS or National Election Study or a single year).
4. Select "Browse codebook" in this window and click "Start."
5. Locate three questions that measure social background characteristics. Record the variable names for those questions.
6. Locate three questions that measure opinions, each of which uses a different question format. Record the variable names for those questions.
7. Locate three questions that measure behavior. Record the variable names for those questions.
8. Click back and select "Download a customized subset of variables/cases." Click "Start."
9. Select Data definitions for SPSS.
10. Enter the names of the nine variables you have chosen in the "Select VARIABLES to include" box. Click "Continue" at the top of the page.
11. Check the variables to make sure they are the ones you selected. If they are correct, click on the "create the files" button.
12. Download the three files ("data," "codebook," and "SPSS file") onto your computer by following the instructions on the page. RENAME your "SPSS file" to "activity10.sps." The sps extension will allow the SPSS software to read that file directly.
13. Open SPSS and click on "file," then "open," then "synatx." When the dialog box opens, find the "activity10.sps" file where it has been stored on your computer.
14. Within the "activity10" synatx file, go to the DATA LIST portion, find the command line "FILE=x" and replace the "x" with the name of the data file you downloaded from the Berkeley site. Be sure to include the file structure. For example, if the name of your file is "PoliSci" and it was stored in the "My Documents" folder of your hard drive, you would type in "c:\my documents\PoliSci".
15. At the bottom of the "activity10" syntax file, go to the "SAVE OUTFILE=y" command and replace "y" with the name of the file you wish to assign your new SPSS data file (e.g, "mydata.sav").
16. Using SPSS, run a frequency distribution for each of your nine variables. If necessary, see Chapter 8 for a review of running a frequency distribution in SPSS.