<p>SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) is a proprietary cross-platform general-purpose statistical software package. <a href="http://www.spss.com/" rel="nofollow">SPSS's homepage</a></p>

<p>Versions 17 and 18 of SPSS were renamed with the acronym PASW (for Predictive Analytics SoftWare), but with version 19 it has been renamed to SPSS (see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPSS" rel="nofollow">Wikipedia</a> for a history of the name changes). One unique aspect of SPSS software compared to other popular propriety software packages (such as Stata or SAS) is the built in functionality to call Python or R commands within syntax. Otherwise it is largely comparable to other general proprietary and freeware packages (such as R), although it differs in some advanced statistical capabilities and aspects of data manipulation.</p>

<p>Suggested readings on using SPSS and learning the command syntax are two online PDF's.</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.spss.com/sites/dm-book/" rel="nofollow">Programming and Data Management for
IBM Statistics</a></li>
<li><a href="http://szoc.tarstud.hu/upload/szoc_szakirany_programmingwithspsssyntaxandmacros.pdf" rel="nofollow">Programming with
SPSS Syntax and Macros</a></li>
</ul>

<p>Other useful print versions are</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=mf8pEAAzN4gC&amp;dq=An+Intermediate+Guide+to+SPSS+Programming%3a+Using+Syntax+for+Data+Management&amp;source=gbs_navlinks_s" rel="nofollow">An Intermediate Guide to SPSS
Programming: Using Syntax for Data
Management</a> by Sarah Boslaugh (For
Data Management)</li>
<li><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=a6FLF1YOqtsC&amp;dq=discovering+statistics+using+SPSS&amp;source=gbs_navlinks_s" rel="nofollow">Discovering statistics using SPSS: and sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll</a>. by Andy Field (For Statistical Analysis)</li>
</ul>

<p>Other forums entirely devoted to the software are (and suggested material to search when encountering a problem with SPSS are):</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://spssx-discussion.1045642.n5.nabble.com/" rel="nofollow">University of Georgia SPSSX discussion list</a></li>
<li><a href="http://groups.google.com/group/comp.soft-sys.stat.spss/topics" rel="nofollow">SPSS google group forum</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/spssdevcentral" rel="nofollow">SPSS developer central</a></li>
</ul>

<p>Other suggested webpages are </p>

<ul>
<li>UCLA's Academic Technology Services <a href="http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/spss/" rel="nofollow">SPSS Resources webpage</a></li>
<li><a href="http://spsstools.net/" rel="nofollow">Raynald's SPSS tools</a></li>
<li><a href="https://sites.google.com/a/lakeheadu.ca/bweaver/Home/statistics/spss/my-spss-page" rel="nofollow">Bruce Weaver's SPSS page</a></li>
<li><a href="http://jeromyanglim.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">Jeromy Anglim's blog</a></li>
</ul>

<p><a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/" rel="nofollow">PSPP</a> is a free-ware, open source alternative largely mimicking the look and functionality of SPSS.</p>
