SPSS Basic Skills Tutorial

Mounting Networked Drives

ISU provides free network-drive space for all faculty, staff, and students. One location provides private storage space (roughly 10mb) called the home share or H drive, and the other space is public, allowing you to create a publicly viewable web page. This second space is called the web share or W drive.

Both of these drives can be accessed anywhere on the ISU local network, including all lab computers, all office computers, and all computers connected to ISUNET via the ISU modem pool or through the ISU sponsored DSL lines (e.g., RESNET). The ITOOLS CD contains, among many other things, the utilities for MAPPING these network drives so that they are accessible to the computer you are working on.  For those operating from off-campus you many need "The Cisco VPN Client" to be able access ISU resources while connected to a third party ISP (AOL, MSN, etc.). In order to send and receive mail from your Illinois State University email account you will need to have the Cisco VPN client installed and running. To download Cisco VPN, visit http://www.helpdesk.ilstu.edu/downloads/dl.phtml?id=1019 This website (SPSS) might not be frequently updated and I would like to you visit the ISU's Computer Help Desk ( http://www.helpdesk.ilstu.edu/ ) for extensive documentation instructing users on how to map to their network drives and for technology infrastructure support system. The information on their website is current and will always remain up-to-date.

The students will be shown how to access these drives when the class meet for the first time in the lab.

To Mount/Map both Network Drives:

After clicking on the Drivemap utility, the following steps should be completed.

 

The computers in DeG 307/8/9, have DRIVEMAP UTILITY icon on the desktop. 

To access these drives in DeG 307/8/9 one drives have been mapped

Doing so will display the contents of the private home share or the public web share respectively. Additionally, one can access either of these drives in any "Open File" dialogue box or any "Save File" dialogue box. Keep in mind that any files saved to W: can be viewed by the world.

Important: The lab in DeG 307/8/9  is set up so that, once you have logged in and mapped your network drives once on a given computer, the computer will automatically re-map those same network drives for you each time you login to that same computer. If you move to a different computer in the lab, you will have to map the drives again.

If "H:" and "W:" are not working as described above, the drive mapping may have become corrupt. The easiest way to resolve that issue is to disconnect the drives and then remap them.

To disconnect the drives:

Then, you will need to follow the procedure described above for mapping your network drives.

Important: You do not need to disconnect your network drives before logging off a given computer. When you log off of the computer, the network drives are automatically disconnected. If you have manually disconnected them, though, the assumption is that you will not need them the next time you login to the same computer. If you have not disconnected the drives manually, the assumption is that the drives should be automatically re-mapped for you the next time you login to the same computer. Thus, you'll save yourself some effort by not disconnecting the drives manually unless you are having difficulty accessing them.

Lab Activities

  1. Mount your network drives as instructed above (if you haven't already)
  2. Save a new MS WORD document to your H: drive by...
    1. Open Microsoft WORD by clicking on it's icon on the desktop
    2. Type a sentence or two
    3. Pull down the FILE menu and select Save
    4. In the File Name box, type "H:" (without quotes) and press the "enter" key (this will display the contents of the H drive and then allow you to further name a file
    5. Enter a name for your file, like "Testing" and either click the "okay" button or hit the "enter" key.
  3. Open "My Computer" to access your H: drive as described above to verify that the file you saved in the step above is there.
  4. Disconnect your network drives as described above.
  5. (Optionally) Map your network drives again for practice. If you do not repeat this optional step, remember you will have to map your network drives to use them at this computer again in the future.

 

Starting the SPSS program

There are two basic ways to start SPSS. If you double-click an SPSS data file (or syntax file, or output file), the program will start up, and then the file you clicked on will be opened.

Alternatively, you can double-click the SPSS Icon from the desktop. The icon looks like this: 

When you start SPSS from the desktop icon, you will be presented with a dialogue box asking you if you would like to open an existing data set, using the data creation wizard, or run a tutorial. The SPSS tutorial is exceptionally detailed and an excellent source of information beyond this more basic tutorial. You may also check the box to indicate you do not want to see this dialogue at start up.

If you already have SPSS open, you can open data and output files using the file menu in the normal way:



It is also important to note that one saves a data set (or changes to a data set) using the Save option (or Save As option) from the file menu in the normal way:


Don't forget to type H: and the enter key to open from or save to your home share.

Also, if you want to start over with a brand-new data set, select New and then Data from the file menu:
 

Similarly, when you have just about enough output in a single file, you may want to save it (as above) and open a new output file:



When you are finished with an SPSS session, you shut down the program in the usual way, selecting Exit from the File menu:



 

There is also a built in tutorial that is available from the Help Menu:



 

Clicking on the Tutorial will bring up a set of "closed" book of tutorials:



 You can see the tutorial topics by double-clicking on the tutorial "book" title:



 


 

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