NEW METHODOLOGIES IN STATISTICS: A DIFFERENT WAY OF STUDYING SPSS

A new way of learning statistics with computers is presented. For this purpose an interactive guide, comprising a web site and a SPSS statistics package emulator program, has been developed. These have been prepared for the Biostatistics subject of the 1st year of the University of Granada BA in Biology, though they might be used by anyone who needs to get started in data managing with SPSS.The web site includes different cases (based on exercises with SPSS) with a theoretical and practical introduction about them and an exercise solved with a SPSS program emulator. Finally another exercise, to be solved by the student with the SPSS program itself, is proposed.The program emulator aims a student's approach to the SPSS program, guiding him in the interactive execution of a specific exercise. The emulator has enabled only the needed options in order to properly perform the guided practice, and monitors the user’s actions, always informing him with warning pop-up windows in case of wrong actions in particular or even with some hints to help the student to find out what his mistake was and to correct it.In this project we present the Interactive SPSS Self-learning Guide version 1.3 which comprises five different practices: the first one is an introduction to the program and Data Editor; the second one is about Descriptive Statistics; the third one is about Regression Analysis; the fourth one, about Probability Calculation; and the fifth one focuses on Confidence Intervals. This guide is available in the University of Granada web server through this link http://www.ugr.es/local/bioestad, where this guide can be browsed online or if you prefer it can be downloaded to view it locally.