The SPSS output viewer will appear with the following result (though, of course, the result will be different according to the data you enter).Īs you can see, the values for the mean and standard deviation appear next to the value for N (which is the number of items in your dataset). Press Continue, and then press OK in the Descriptives dialog box. deviation (and if you wish you can choose additional measures – e.g., Skewness). Now choose Options, and select Mean and Std. This can be done by selecting it on the left, and then clicking the blue arrow button. You need to get the variable for which you want to know the mean and standard deviation into the variables box on the right (as per the image above).

This will open up the following dialog box. To calculate the mean and standard deviation, choose Analyze -> Descriptive Statistics -> Descriptives, as below. In other words, you want to know the average time it took to do the task, and how much the times vary – their spread. You want to find out the mean and standard deviation of the duration variable. We’re working on the assumption that you have already imported your data into SPSS, and you’re looking at something a bit like this (though obviously with different variables, figures, etc).Īs you can see, we’ve got three variables: (a) duration – which is the duration in seconds it takes to complete a certain task (b) sex – male or female and (c) height – in inches. There are a number of different ways to achieve this, but what follows is probably the easiest.

Result will appear in the SPSS output viewer.

Click Options, and select Mean and Standard Deviation.

Drag the variable of interest from the left into the Variables box on the right.

Click Analyze -> Descriptive Statistics -> Descriptives.

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