Quick Sort in IBM SPSS Statistics

In IBM SPSS Statistics, you can work inside a single, integrated interface to run descriptive statistics, regression, advanced statistics, and machine learning models. You can create publication-ready charts, tables, and decision trees in one tool. IBM SPSS Statistics is easy to use, provides analysis automation, comprehensive statistical tools, integration with open source, and help at your fingertips. 

To improve your experience using IBM SPSS Statistics, the Version 1 SPSS experts have created various Tech Tips. This Tech Tip looks at quickly sorting in IBM SPSS Statistics. 

Often, analysts want to sort data while working with it. Sorting allows us to arrange data so that we can get a better understanding of it. For example, you run a text analysis and want to sort the compound sentiment score in descending order so that comments with positive sentiment are at the top of the file. Once you do this, you will quickly see the most positive scores. Or perhaps you have information on respondents’ age and income. You can sort both fields in descending order to see the oldest respondents with the highest incomes.   

You can also use sorting to find items or records. For example, you may have several entities or stores. For example, if you are sorting store locations and these locations have a numeric code (e.g., 1 = Northern Ireland, 2 = Midlands, 3 = Northeast), your data will be sorted by the numeric code. Sorting means you can find the stores quickly in your data file. You can sort your data alphabetically in ascending or descending order if your data is a string.   

Sorting your data is simple in IBM SPSS Statistics. Select the column or columns you want to sort to get started. The column(s) will be highlighted, and you can right-click on the column(s). You will have the option to sort in Ascending or Descending order.