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 siteand a SPSS statistics package emulator program, has been developed. These have been prepared for the Biostatisticssubject of the 1st year of the University of Granada BA in Biology, though they might be used by anyone who needs toget started in data managing with SPSS.The web site includes different cases (based on exercises with SPSS) with a theoretical and practical introduction aboutthem and an exercise solved with a SPSS program emulator. Finally an exercise, to be solved by the student with theSPSS program itself, is proposed.The program emulator aims a student's approach to the SPSS program, guiding him in the interactive execution of aspecific exercise. The emulator has enabled only the needed options in order to properly perform the guided practice, andmonitors the user’s actions, always informing him with warning pop-up windows in case of wrong actions in particularor 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 thirdone is about Regression Analysis; the fourth one, about Probability Calculation; and the fifth one focuses on ConfidenceIntervals. This guide is available in the University of Granada web server through this linkhttp://www.ugr.es/local/bioestad, where this guide can be browsed online or if you prefer it can be downloaded to view itlocally.