2022 Introduction to Statistics in Research Mitchell 2nd ed

I N T R O T O R E S E A R C H : D A T A V I S U A L I Z A T I O N & C O M M O N S T A T T E S T S

Table 93: Summer Reading Program with a comparative stem-and-leaf plot

SPSS – Comparative Stem-and-leaf plot

The directions for creating a comparative stem-and-leaf plot is very similar to the single variable of hours, but let’s repeat them for convenience.

1) Data is entered into SPSS with a column for sex (male or female) and a column for Books_Read (like this partial illustration). 2) Analyze >Descriptive Statistics > Explore 3) Move “Sex” to the Factor list and Books_Read to the dependent list , then select “OK”

Table 94: How data would be set up in SPSS

SPSS provides one stem-and-leaf for males and one for females, but the better way to display it can be the one shown by hand (illustration above).

Table 95: SPSS Step 3 for a comparative stem and leaf plot

Although you can tell that females did better at reading, it is much easier to see it if you review the boxplot that is also produced by SPSS.

Table 96: Box plot showing the summer reading program results using SPSS

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