Relationship Map

This Tech Tip shows how to run a relationship map. 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.  

Relationship maps allow users to examine and understand the relationships between variables in a visual format. Using a Relationship map, a user can visualise a crosstab table and explore the strong relationships or links between categories of more than two variables.  Users can see the links between variables and relationship counts, represented as the width of the line. Each variable category has a circle or a node. Larger lines and nodes indicate stronger connections and influence.

To create a Relationship Map, users can go to the Graphs menu and select Relationship Map. Once the dialog box is open, users can choose nominal or ordinal variables. The Options button provides several options. Users can control node size, layout, missing values, link size, link labels, counts, and grouping. Link grouping is especially useful as it groups links into weak, normal and strong links. Once this is done, the strong and weak associations are clear.

Relationship maps are also interactive. Users can double-click the map to examine and explore the links and nodes. Double-clicking opens the map in the Graphboard Editor. Once open, users can go to the View menu and select the option to Explore the map. Users can hover their cursor over links and nodes to see the counts. Nodes can also be moved, and there are options for editing the map.