Use of Statistical Analysis Supporting Tools in Libraries: an overview of statistical package for social science

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Singh, A.

Affiliations: Assistant Librarian, National Law University, Delhi – 110078 (E): akash@nludelhi.ac.in

Abstract: Libraries, being hub of intellectual assets and tools, have added responsibility of serving their research scholars in every sphere of research activities. Academic libraries are accountable to facilitate research-based services such as access mechanism to explore digital collection and electronic resources, data collection tools, statistical software accessibility and usability, similarity check tools, research management tools, citation style manuals and referral services. A number of statistical analysis software have been developed for carrying out data analysis and interpretation. Statistical analysis system (SAS), MINITAB, STATA, R & MATLAB, MS-Excel, Perfect Statistics Professionally Presented (PSPP), and Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) are worth quoting examples of SAS. The SPSS is one of the best statistical software maintained and marketed by IBM. The article presents a short overview of functionality, usability and applicability of SPSS in research. The article also takes into account how various types of files, statistical formulae, and steps to use SPSS for data evaluation, synthesis, interpretation, and visualization. Role of libraries in facilitating information about usage of statistical software packages has also been suitably discussed.

Keywords: Research methodology, Statistical analysis tools, SPSS

DOI: 10.18329/09757597/2022/15206

Journal: World Digital Libraries - An international journal, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 91-104, 2022