Doing Your Part to Combat Viruses

Please make sure you do not bring infected disks into the lab. The lab has software which will check your disks, and NCSU has site licensed anti-virus software for downloading for your use (you must have a Unity account and password). If you are in the Social Science Lab and have an account, please run the anti-virus program on all your disks. Note this is a course and university requirement.

Homework

The first seven chapters of the textbook are assigned. This reading assignment is best done at a computer which has SPSS installed. The purpose of the readings is to become familiar with general usage of SPSS. For most students, this should be a basic review of what you already know. Unlike future weeks, no assignments are collected for Chapters 1-7, but you should feel confident you know how to work the SPSS menu system and set up your data prior to the next class meeting!

Also assigned are online review readings pertaining to research design, validity, significance testing, and association. All of these are considered prerequisite topics to have been mastered prior to the first day of class.

In future weeks, you are to attempt to do homework before the corresponding topics are presented in class. This means you should do the readings for the upcoming class (as well as this week's readings if not a;ready done prior to the start of classes). Specifically, in addition to the SPSS review, you should look ahead to and attempt to do the exercises for Week 2 (Data Screening). These exercises are turned in, unlike Chapters 1-7.

Tips about printing from VCL. If you are accessing SPSS via vcl.ncsu.edu, note you have a choice between SPSS and "SPSS all modules". The latter has extra modules such as Exact Tests and Missing Value Analysis. SamplePower is a separate choice. After clicking to make a "New Reservation", you will (after waiting for "pending" to go away) click "Connect!", whereupon you will be given a password. This is the password you will need, not your Unity password. when you click "Get RDP File", needed to launch the session.

Inside VCL, launch SamplePower or SPSS. In SPSS, you can save simply by choosing File, Export. Your local folders should show when you click Browse. If you choose File, Save As, you will save an output file which can be read only by SPSS, whereas "Export" can be read by Word and other programs. In SamplePower, you can choose File, Copy to clipboard, and then paste to Word (but not to all Windows programs). Or in SamplePower, you can ask for a text report (View, Text Report_ and when it is generated, ask for File, Save report as, to save the report to your local drive.

Tip about printing SPSS output: > Some SPSS tables do not fit within Word margins. From SPSS, select your output, then click File, Export and export to RTF format. In Word, if needed select File, Page Setup, and click Landscape. If there are still any too-wide tables, right-click on the offending table and select Autofit, Autofit to Contents.