Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
from the standard ANOVA. In the body of this topic, we have covered, in
detail, how to read all these types of tables associated with the analyses we
have performed.
A.14.2 SAVING THE SPSS OUTPUT FILE WITHIN SPSS
Output files have the extension
.spo
and can be saved in the same manner
as data files. Once saved, these files can be opened in the same manner as
you would open data files as described in Section A.11.
A.14.3 SAVING THE SPSS OUTPUT FILE AS A PDF DOCUMENT
A PDF document is a type of file that is in portable document format.
It is a faithful copy of the original, but it is not editable unless you have
the full version of Adobe Acrobat or some comparable application. When
PDF documents are printed, they mirror what you see on the screen
even though your computer may not have the fonts that are used in the
document. That's what makes them portable - the portable document
format contains within it all the information necessary for the document
to be displayed on the screen or to be printed.
Saving the output as a PDF document is extremely valuable for students
and those who may not have SPSS loaded on the computer (perhaps their
home computer or personal laptop) that they will be using away from the
organizational setting so that they can view the results in order to prepare
a report. A PDF document can be opened and viewed on any computer.
Adobe Acrobat Reader is a free application for both Windows and Mac
operating systems that can be downloaded from the Adobe Web site; with
it, you can open and view PDF files. Apple also supplies an application
called Preview as a standard part of its OS-10 operating system that is
functionally equivalent to what Adobe offers.
SPSS will allow you to save a PDF version of the output file that
contains your statistical analysis. Since only the SPSS application can open
your original output file (and only a version at least as recent as the one
that generated the output), it is an ideal way for you to view the
full set
of
your results (view a copy of the output file) when you do not have access to
SPSS.
To have SPSS save your output file as a PDF document, the output
file should be the active window (click its blue bar to make sure that it is
active). Then select from the main menu
File
➜
Export
. This brings you
to the screen shown in Figure A20.
Select
Portable Document Format
from the
Document Type
drop-
down menu. Then select
Browse
to navigate to the location where you
want to save the PDF file. When you reach your desired location, name
the file. Figure A21 shows the result of this browsing and naming process.
Then click
Save
. This will bring you back to the main
Export Output
screen. Click
OK
and wait for the creation process to be finished.
