IBM SPSS Statistics Reviews

I have wide experience with SPSS Statistics. I have even written books about it.  

Statistics is part of analysis, but SPSS Statistics has some differences from just straight analysis. It is also a modeler, has some automation, and can build models like linear regression. It is completely different when you use a modeler for your analysis. A modeler is designed specifically for building models of data in an automated way and using the models for prediction, and forecasting. It can help you see the data and the meaning in different ways.  

Because I am a statistician, originally I am trained for both modeling and non-parametric analysis. Most modeling tools are completely different. They have no non-parametric analysis because they are used for large sample data or big data analysis.  

The primary use for SPSS Statistics for me is, of course, data analysis.  

IBM SPSS Modeler is a set of data mining tools that enable us to develop predictive models. It has both statistical techniques (like regression techniques) or non statistical techniques (like Classification trees , Neural networks etc.). It doesn’t contain mainly the Nonparametric tests, may be because it depends on small samples.

It has automation nodes that helps non-experts to pick the best technique.

On the other hand, IBM SPSS Statistics is used mainly to analyze data, weather it is a small or large sample. If it is small (and drawn from non-normal population), then we must use the non-parametric tests. It has “automated” non-parametric tests to be use by both experts and non-experts.

Beside its main use for data analysis, it has also some modeling techniques like automatic linear modeling, Classification trees and Neural networks.

This product provides the opportunity to better explore data and provide complete data analysis because it works both with modeling and non-parametric analysis.  

I like SPSS too much to want to make changes to the product in a major way. There are some minor things. The one thing I can think of that will be useful in a broader sense is that it may be nice to be able to add color to some of the data in sheets or reports. Sometimes it is easier for you to visualize results if you can use color inside the datasheets.  

The original concern or intent of products like this is to analyze data, not to manipulate the data. But there are times when you need to manipulate data. This is something that would help more in data entry because there should be ways to fix errors in manual entry, et cetera. Addition of some data manipulation capabilities may be good for some things, but often you would do that outside of SPSS as it is not the purpose of the tool.  

SPSS Statistics will be more efficient if it starts to use additional automation. The advantage of automation in SPSS automation is obvious and exemplified in regards to the modeler, the non-parametrics, and the linear regression. But if they can add more automation in other areas, I think it will be more powerful. For example, the data science can have additional automation, for serious data science or something like EMA (Ecological Momentary Assessments). This would be a very interesting addition to SPSS Statistics.  

They can also add some automation with regression itself. Like logistic regression and alternate regression. Some people do not know the difference between binary, logistic, and the multinomial logistic analysis. It is an advantage in the SPSS Modeler. It is automatic. It can detect what type of modeling to choose. If a part of the variable is binary, it will use binary logistics. If it is appropriate it will use multiple logistic regression. It can detect this and do it automatically.

So, if SPSS Statistics starts to use some additional automation, it will be a step between the statistics and more serious data science. Those powers would be remarkable. Data science currently is the future in my estimation. More of the world of business and finance and other areas are starting to think about the applications of data science. And data science needs some data engineering, which is possible to realize through automation. This is especially true in some things like data tracing.  

If they take those steps to add some automation to the SPSS Statistics, it will push more people to understand the importance of analytics and advanced data science.  

But if it can achieve automation, I believe that SPSS Statistics has to do more within the application and the company to stress the importance of learning statistics before learning SPSS itself. If SPSS can add in its development or integration some short notes about how to use statistics, that would help users. It is not enough to be able to push buttons to get an analysis. This would give you a result that you will not understnd.  

SPSS could include an advantage of statistical analysis that goes beyond just the analysis itself. For instance, if you pick to do a logistic regression, you would find a short note about what logistical evaluation is and then how to use it within SPSS. It should not be integrated with the menu itself. It should be inside the statistical analysis area. Most of the people using the SPSS Statistic know which modeling they should use. But it is not always the case. It could be more of a learning tool as well as a productive one.  

A few years ago, SPSS made something that could be useful. It is called the Statistical Coach. It asks you some questions, and based on your answer, the coach guides you as to what to use. It was a good statistical coach. But if they can summarize the most important tests, I believe it is not too hard to make something that would be very useful inside the application and modeler itself.  

If you have the experience with data science, you will know how to do what you want to do using different tools — even competing products with SPSS. I can understand if somebody has to ask me how to do two-way ANOVA in SPSS, for example, as it is not an obvious thing. I will guide him through that if they needed to do it. SPSS can clarify how to do things in their application especially analysis that is common usage. In a way, the tool itself could provide more training for the people using it.  

I have been working with IBM SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) since its name was Clementine. I think that was version 11. Now it is version 18. I think I have been working with it for eight years approximately.  

I have not used the IBM technical support for SPSS Statistics directly. I am working with SPSS since version eight back in the eighties or early nineties. So it is now version 27 and I have been working with the product for 20 versions. I have become very familiar with this product and all its changes over that period of time. Because of that, it is not necessary for me to contact the customer support.  

I believe that the initial setup is simple. The problem of SPSS Statistics, it is not to click the icon to do the installation. The problem of Statistics is to know which statistical analysis you have to use.  

Some people used to say that they know how to use SPSS Statistics, but they do not know which type of analysis to use. The manufacturer of the tool may want to do something to include training in the initial setup so that the users know more about the tool that they are using.  

In comparing the price of other products, SPSS Statistics is too expensive. Even when most of the universities in the Middle East have licenses for SPSS Statistics, they do not have licenses for the Modeler because of its price. This reduces the utility of the product.  

I have had the opportunity to evaluate some tools. The differences are not always obvious in casual use.  

For example, there are some little differences between SPSS and Minitab. If you want to make something called two-way ANOVA (Analysis of Variance), you can find it directly, and clearly in the Minitab interface. It is right in the menu and you can pick two-way ANOVA. But if you are thinking of two-way ANOVA using SPSS, you will not find it. You will find only one-way ANOVA. To make two-way ANOVA, you have to go to the general linear model, pick the univariate to use to obtain the two-way ANOVA. It is there and done a different way, it is just not called a two-way ANOVA. It is known as general linear model. The only problem is that the type of analysis is not known as two-way ANOVA in SPSS.  

So the difference is not that this type of analysis is impossible in one product and not the other.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate IBM SPSS Statistics between eight and nine. If they add some automation with time series and regression analysis exactly as they did with the linear regression, it would be a much better tool. If you open the regression modeling, the first item you will find is an automatic linear model. It uses the best technique, which is either is forward analysis or is stepwise. It can anticipate the user's needs and train at the same time. Some additional capabilities of this sort will push the tool forward as well as empowering the users.  

We use SPSS specifically for doing segmentation analysis and customer analysis including various kinds of share model predictions, etc.

The solution has numerous valuable features. We particularly like custom tabs. It's very useful. We end up analyzing a lot of software data, so features related to custom tabs are really helpful.

All of the clustering for multi-related techniques including clustering, factoring, etc. is quite useful.

The cost integration features are very good.

The data preparation skills need improvement. When I compare the solution with other tools or competitors, this solution needs to simplify data preparation. 

The solution needs more planning tools and capabilities.

I've been using the solution for about ten years now.

The solution is very stable. I haven't come across or heard of any problems on the solution. There's no bugs or glitches. It works well.

I don't believe this solution would be the best for companies that need to scale. It doesn't have the level of scalability available to grow very much.

I haven't been in touch with technical support directly, but I have been using their forums to help troubleshoot issues. I've researched some forums. Whenever I encounter issues within the solution, I will actively browse a few forums for blogs for documentation that might provide me with some insights.

I have previously used different solutions. I've used SAS, R, and Minit. There are many other solutions as well that I have tried out at one time or another.

The initial setup is very straightforward. We didn't have any issues with the implementation.

I didn't actually deploy the solution, so I can't speak to how long it took. We use different tools as well that I work with. I can be deployed, but I'm not sure how long it would take an organization exactly.

We have an enterprise-level license with IBM.

Although we're working with IBM right now, we're currently looking for a new data science platform solution. I was hoping to find an open-source tool that could fit our needs in the future. We're evaluating R and Python right now, but they're not quite what we need. On all of our new engagements, we'd really like to use open-source only.

We're an official IBM partner. We have an enterprise license; I'm not sure if we're currently using the latest version or not. We might be on V3 or V4.

I'd recommend the solution to other organizations.

I'd rate it nine out of ten.

I am using SPSS Statistics in many, many, many fields - more than you can imagine. The last one I was working on was with women at the Human Rights Council. I'm also using SPSS Amos for structural equation modeling. I'm using it to analyze data for business, data for engineering, and many other fields. Besides being a professional, I also sometimes advise or solve problems for others who are working with it in business or doing their Ph.D. or master's degree in it. Again, it is useful in many, many fields.

In terms of the features I've found most valuable, I'd say the duration, the correlation, and of course the nonparametric statistics. I use it for reliability and survival analysis, time series, regression models in different solutions, and different types of solutions. I'm using most of the content of SPSS.

I think the duration and time-series need improvement.

Some things need more explanation. For instance, if you are using the automated part in SPSS, you have automatic linear modeling. It gives you the meaning of the result, explaining if it is significant. But most of the package will give you the fixed value, or the p-value, without an explanation as to whether it significant or not. Some beginners might need not just the results, but also an explanation for them.

This already exists in two parts of the SPSS. One for the automatic linear modeling, and the second for nonparametric. The automation, the automatic part, gives you not only the results and the output but also what this output means. For me as a professional, I can explain the results even if it's not included in the output. But if they were to include some explanation for the results, such as is it significantly based on the P-value, that would make SPSS great.

Additionally, there is something else that really needs improvement - the part related to multivariate analysis. The chi-squared for instance. Some packages can give you the chi-squared directly, but in the multivariate part of SPSS, it's not as clear as it should be. So working with the multivariate could be improved or expanded. This last semester I was teaching multivariate to postgraduate students and it was not as clear as it should be. In conclusion, regarding improvements for the package, I can say that multivariate needs improving.

Lastly, some results need to be presented in a more diverse way. For instance, if you are working in biostatistics then sensitivity, specificity, and relative risk need to also be included. Some people don't use SPSS because they need some medical calculations and they think that SPSS cannot calculate it. But if you are working with the older, survival analysis, you can add this part to the medical field. Actually, it is really easy to include it and calculate it for it. As I told you, you can add a medical field part for the study design, such as screening tests, sensitivity, specificity and so on.

I have been using IBM SPSS Statistics for more than 20 years.

I have written five books on using SPSS Statistics and one book for using the Modeler. Two of them were in English for bio-statistics, and the others are in other fields, but in Arabic.

I like the stability and would rate it at more than 95%. If you're working with the package for a long period of time, you understand most of the texts that you need to know.

I told you I wrote five books about using SPSS, so of course, I'm totally impressed with this package more than any other one.

When I was in the United States, I started to use SAS. But for the Middle East, SAS is not as easy as SPSS.

I believe more than 50% of those in the university are working on it, so it's a long scale of users. For instance, tomorrow I am leading training for using the Modeler in a department in the university. All the time, a lot of people ask for a daily cost for using SPSS because it is the most common solution here in Saudi Arabia.

I have never contacted support. I hope I can contact them with a call to improve my notes about the outputs or something.

The initial setup is straightforward and doesn't take more than 20 minutes on average.

I do the deployment myself. We can sometimes download from IBM's site. It doesn't need any help.

We have a package for the university students and teachers. It's a package for graduate students, and the students can use it. They can download it and use it.

We evaluated other options. In general, in the Middle East, we use many different software packages, like SAS, Minitab, and SPSS. But I believe that SPSS might be the number one in the Middle East. I'm talking about Saudi Arabia or Egypt. 

Of course I would recommend SPSS. I advise everyone to use it. As I mentioned, I wrote books about using SPSS. They are used for training and I knew most of the lecturers were using the package.

Time series is a branch in and of itself, and it's very important for forecasting the future. I was suffering until I could simplify this using the SPSS for forecasting or for building time series modeling.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give IBM SPSS Statistics at least a nine.

Once it is installed it does an important job because it helps with long statistical analysis processes.

You can quickly build models because it does the work for you.

The technical support should be improved.

I have been using IBM SPSS Statistics for one year.

This is a stable product.

This product is scalable and there are three versions. There is a smaller version, a mid-level, and there is a full enterprise version. The licensing can make it difficult to deploy models although it should be possible with the enterprise version. However, I have never tried it.

The technical support is not very useful. You can find help on the internet but if you really have a problem then it can take a while before you get a solution.

The setup is pretty straightforward and I think that you can easily set up your own connection.

My client performed the setup.

Overall, I like this product and I don't have any major things that I would like to change.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We do data collection. We have a data collection plan, and we analyze the data and estimate how we can create capacity within the processes. Afterward, we just hand it out to our development team.

Capability analysis is one of the main and valuable functions. We also do some hypothesis testing in Minitab and summary stats. These are the functions that we find very useful.

If there is any self-generation data collection plan (DCP), it would be helpful in gathering data. It would also be useful if there is a function to scale it up to, let's say, UiPath and have it consolidate and integrate into a UiPath solution.

I have been using this solution for more than 15 years. 

It has some bugs off and on, but nothing has been a roadblock for us.

We have 500 users of this solution. I'm coming from an organization with 40,000 people.

I have not dealt with tech support.

We don't deal with that. The IT guys install it on our computers, and we just run it. That's it.

I would rate IBM SPSS Statistics an eight out of ten.

The company is primarily using the solution as a statistical tool.

Since we are using the software as a statistical tool, I would say the best aspects of it are the regression and segmentation capabilities. That said, I've used it for all sorts of things.

The solution needs to make it easier to upgrade the software. Right now it's quite difficult. I always have to get a third party involved to upgrade the solution. This is one of the main reasons why I tend not to upgrade it very often and may not be using the most current version of the service.

It would be helpful if there was better documentation on how to properly use the solution. A beginner's guide on how to use the various programming functions within the product would be so useful to a lot of people. I found that everything was very confusing at first. Having clear documentation would help alleviate that.

The solution needs to focus on better functionality for correspondence analysis.

The company has been using the solution for about two years at this point.

The solution is stable. There are no problems with reliability. It doesn't crash. there aren't bugs or glitches that we need to deal with. It's good.

We've found the solution to be very scalable. If a company needs to scale up, they can do so quite easily.

Currently, we are only operating with two licenses.

It's used a fair amount. However, obviously, since the COVID-19 lockdown, work has been very slow. Right now, it's not being used very much. I'm probably not planning to increase my usage due to the fact that I need to first get sales back up to where they were near the beginning of the year, before the quarantining and social distancing.

I've been in touch with technical support and have sought their help with a few support issues. So far, I've been satisfied with the level of attention they've given us. I consider them to be very good.

We didn't previously use a different solution. This company is quite new, and we've been using this solution from the beginning. However, I do use other tools to supplement this package. Some of it is third-party software, and some of it is my own software that I have written.

The initial setup is not straightforward at all. It's quite complex. So much so that we don't handle the set up in-house. We need to contract out the work to make sure it is done correctly.

We were a new company when we originally implemented it two years ago. There wasn't any implementation strategy other than to get it up and running and start using it. I basically bought it from a supplier of SPSS. They deployed it on our behalf as we didn't have the capabilities to do so ourselves. There were issues with it even with help. Those didn't get resolved until a number of months down the line. It's now completely fine.

We had a third party handle the implementation for us. We also have a third party handle the upgrade process.

We're just a customer. We don't have any special working relationship with IBM. We may not be using the latest version of the solution. It's been about a year since I have last updated it.

I'd advise other organizations considering implementing the solution to make sure that they find a partner or somebody who can help them handle the solution.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

I primarily use the solution for data analysis.

Some time I have used it RFM analysis, in sales. It has given good insight for improvement

The tests, videos, and tools that are the most useful depend on what objective the company has, but all of the features are quite good.

The solution is very comprehensive, especially compared to Minitabs, which is considered more for manufacturing. However, whatever data you want to analyze can be handled with SPSS.

One of the areas that should be similar to Minitabs is the use of blogs. The Minitabs blog helps users understand the tools and gives lots of practical examples. Following the SPSS manual is cumbersome. It's a good, exhaustive manual, but it's not practical to use. With Minitabs, you can go to the blogs and find specific articles written about various components and it's very helpful. Without blogs, we find SPSS more complicated.

I've been using the solution for one or two years.

The stability of the solution is good. We've never faced any issues.

The solution is scalable.

I haven't really used technical support. Mostly I use Google to look for answers to my questions.

We currently use both SPSS and Minitabs. We prefer Minitabs, but if we don't find a solution on it, we switch to SPSS.

In comparison to Minitabs, the initial setup was more complex. The solution has a lot of options and we weren't sure which were the best to use, and that made the experience frustrating. In the end, the deployment took longer than Minitabs.

NA

not calculated

I'd advise users to think about using Minitabs. The solution is simpler. However, if you are working with big data, SPSS is better. For large data sets, there's nothing better than SPSS.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. I'd rate it higher, but it's quite a complex product.

My primary use for this solution was to interpret the results of a survey. I made use of correlation methods and other features to perform this analysis.

The most valuable feature is the user interface because you don't need to write code. You can drag and drop selections and the menu is very helpful. You can adjust your parameters and other things, all through the interface.

The licensing model is not popular and should be changed to SaaS.

This solution is not suitable for use with Big Data.

I had been using IBM SPSS Statistics for two or three years. I have changed roles and am not currently working with this solution.

The stability of this solution is good.

The scalability of this solution is not good because we cannot use it with Big Data. Instead, we used IBM SPSS Modeler.

The price of this solution is a little bit high, which was a problem for my company.

This is a product that I recommend for people who do not need to work with Big Data.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.