One of the most common research questions is do different groups have different mean scores on some variable? This question is best answered in 3 steps:
- create a table showing mean scores per group -you'll probably want to include the frequencies and standard deviations as well;
- create a chart showing mean scores per group;
- run some statistical test -ANOVA in this case. However, this is only meaningful if your data are (roughly) a simple random sample from your target population.
We'll show the first 2 steps using an employee survey whose data are in bank_clean.sav. The screenshot below shows what these data basically look like.
Creating a Means Table
For creating a table showing means per category, we could mess around with
but its not worth the effort as the syntax is as simple as it gets. So let's just run it and inspect the result.
means q1 by jtype
/cells count mean stddev.
Result
Note: we set a table template before running the table shown below.
Basically, our table tells us that the mean employee care ratings increase with higher job levels except for “upper management”. A proper descriptives table -always recommended- gives nicely detailed information. However, it's not very visual. So let's now run our chart.
SPSS Bar Chart Menu & Dialogs
As a rule of thumb, I create all charts from
and avoid the Chart Builder whenever I can -which is pretty much always unless I need a stacked bar chart with percentages.
In the dialog shown below, selecting enables you to 
enter a dependent variable;
I usually include a title that describes what the chart is showing. I also throw in a subtitle that says which cases are included in my chart.
Basic Bar Chart Means by Category Syntax
GRAPH
/BAR(SIMPLE)=MEAN(q1) BY jtype
/TITLE='Mean Employee Care Rating by Job Type'
/SUBTITLE='N = 423'.
Result
We now have our basic chart but it doesn't look too good.From SPSS version 25 onwards, it will look somewhat better. However, see New Charts in SPSS 25 - How Good Are They Really? Yet. We'll fix this by setting a chart template.
Note that a chart template can also sort this bar chart -for instance by descending means- but we'll skip that for now.
Bar Chart Means by Category Syntax II
set ctemplate "bar-chart-means-trans-720-1.sgt".
*Rerun chart with template set.
GRAPH
/BAR(SIMPLE)=MEAN(q1) BY jtype
/TITLE='Mean Employee Care Rating by Job Type'
/SUBTITLE='N = 423'.
Result
Right, so that's about it. If you need a couple of similar charts, you could copy-paste-edit the last GRAPH command (no need to repeat the other commands). If you need many similar charts, you could loop over the GRAPH command with Python.
If you're going to run other types of charts, don't forget to set a different chart template. Or switch if off altogether by running
set ctemplate none.
Thanks for reading!
SPSS MEANS Command
SPSS – Correlations in APA Format
This tutorial has 2 comments
By Ruben Geert van den Berg on July 12th, 2018
Just writing out all syntax manually suffices too.
But -just like SPSS macros- it's just hopelessly inefficient.
For one thing, macros know nothing whatsoever about either your dictionary or your data values. They can't even look up a range of variable names.
Python does this -and many other things that macros can't- with a mere handful of clean and readable code.
Perhaps you should give it a try some time.
By David Marso on July 11th, 2018
"If you need many similar charts, you could loop over the GRAPH command with Python."
Or not to be heretical old fashioned or obstinate a simple macro would suffice. Why are people so damned obsessed with python?