Statistical analysis software

Functionality	Background	Licence availability, restrictions and links to distributor
SPSS is a general purpose statistical package which provides a wide range of functionality, being particularly strong in descriptive statistics, regression, and multivariate analysis. There is a structural equation modelling add-in: see entry on AMOS below. There is a user friendly graphical interface and a very extensive help facility which not only describes the package but provides much useful material on the statistical methods themselves.	SPSS originally stood for statistical package for the social science. It was developed in the 1960s and has evolved over the years into a fully-fledged package that allows a very broad range of statistical analyses, across a wide range of disciplines, while it remains the most widely used package within the social sciences. It is now owned and sold but IBM.	Site licence that extends to home use for staff and students. Now available as a free download from ITS: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/its/ servicessupport/software/list/spss There are many textbooks which provide introductions to the use of SPSS within particular disciplines. Amazon lists a huge number. Please note that the Warwick license for SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys will cease from January 2014.

Note on General Purpose Statistical Packages:

Broadly, these packages offer the user an easy way of applying standard estimation, confidence interval and hypothesis testing techniques to general data, usually input in the form of a spreadsheet.

Please share your experiences and examples of how you have used this software by leaving a comment below, to help others choose the right software for their research requirements.