Add Variables together in SPSS using the Compute Procedure (Using the Sum Function) - Part 1

Learn how to add variables together in SPSS using the Compute Procedure in SPSS (using the SUM Function). Check out our next text, 'SPSS Cheat Sheet,' here: http://goo.gl/b8sRHa. Prime and 'Unlimited' members, get our text for free! (Only $4.99 otherwise, but will likely increase soon.) For our SPSS video series, click here: SPSS Descriptive Statistics Videos: http://tinyurl.com/m4srgoh SPSS Inferential Statistics Videos: http://tinyurl.com/lm9hpwc Video Transcript: In this tutorial I want to look at and compare the Sum function in SPSS with just manually adding the variables both of these approaches using the Compute procedure. So here in this data set we have 5 questions which is very similar to the first tutorial I showed on how to add variables together the only difference is now I have notice this period here for person 9 on question five, Q5. This indicates a missing value. So in other words for person 9 when they completed the five questions for some reason they didn't complete question number 5. Now we don't know if they didn't complete it because they didn't like something about it or if it was simply a mistake and they just missed it. Let's go ahead and look at how to compute how to add these variables together using two approaches and we'll see if there's any difference between the two approaches in how they treat this missing value. So first we'll go to Transform, Compute Variable and I showed this in a previous tutorial so I'm not going to go through it again except just briefly summarize it I have Total = Q1 + Q2 + Q3 + Q4 + Q5. That is going to add together all the variables. But let's actually add one thing to our total here. Let's call it Total_Sum indicating that we are just summing the variables together manually. We'll click OK and then we get some output there which will disregard this amount of output from previously which is irrelevant to what we're doing here. OK notice the total sum it added together the five questions but notice what happened for person number 9 now it didn't add together the values using this approach where the questions are just manually added together using the Compute procedure if there's a missing value anywhere among the five questions then SPSS simply puts a missing value in the place of the total. OK now I want to show you another approach using the Compute procedure. So we'll go back to Transform and then Compute Variable and now what I want to do is use a function. OK so now we're going to call this total sum function. I'll just call it Tot_SumF for function and here I need to delete this area so highlight it and press Delete and then we're going to go to the Function group. Notice if you scroll down you will see Statistical. Double-click on that and then it brings up - down below - a number of different functions that are available and we want to use the Sum function that's going to add up all the values and there's a description in the box here that you can read. OK so we want the Sum function so I'm going to double-click that and notice what it does it puts in here SUM(?,?) and we need to fill or replace the question mark replace the question marks with our variables. So we have Q1 here and then we have Q2 and the format is you put the variable and then a comma and then the next variable and so on. So Q3, Q4, Q5. OK so we have SUM Q1 comma, etc., all the way through Q5. For step by step help with statistics, with a focus on SPSS. Both descriptive and inferential statistics covered. For descriptive statistics, topics covered include: mean, median, and mode in spss, standard deviation and variance in spss, bar charts in spss, histograms in spss, bivariate scatterplots in spss, stem and leaf plots in spss, frequency distribution tables in spss, creating labels in spss, sorting variables in spss, inserting variables in spss, inserting rows in spss, and modifying default options in spss. For inferential statistics, topics covered include: t tests in spss, anova in spss, correlation in spss, regression in spss, chi square in spss, and MANOVA in spss. Subscribe today! YouTube Channel:    / statisticsinstructor