This small book addresses different kinds of datafiles, as commonly
encountered in clinical research, and their data-analysis on SPSS
Software. Some 15 years ago serious statistical analyses were conducted
by specialist statisticians using ma- frame computers. Nowadays, there
is ready access to statistical computing using personal computers or
laptops, and this practice has changed boundaries between basic
statistical methods that can be conveniently carried out on a pocket
calculator and more advanced statistical methods that can only be
executed on a computer. Clinical researchers currently perform basic
statistics without professional help from a statistician, including
t-tests and chi-square tests. With help of user-friendly software the
step from such basic tests to more complex tests has become smaller, and
more easy to take. It is our experience as masters' and doctorate class
teachers of the European College of Pharmaceutical Medicine (EC Socrates
Project Lyon France) that s- dents are eager to master adequate command
of statistical software for that purpose. However, doing so, albeit
easy, still takes 20-50 steps from logging in to the final result, and
all of these steps have to be learned in order for the procedures to be
successful.
