IBM SPSS Statistics Reviews

We primarily use the solution for analytics. 

The analytics on offer are very good.

It offers very good visualization. 

The dashboards are excellent. 

It's stable. 

The reports could be better. Usually, when we make reports, we use Microsoft of PowerPoint. Editing in PowerPoint is not so easy. You should be able to edit things a bit more. We can't edit the graphs or tables. It does auto-sync there. If I change something in Excel, it will be reflected in Word. The same should be possible with this solution. 

We'd like more engagement and advice. We need more integrations to help make analysis more powerful. 

The pricing is a bit expensive. 

I've been using the solution for about 15 years. 

The solution is stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

I'd rate the solution's reliability between seven to nine out of ten. 

We have about 30 to 40 users leveraging it in our organization. In my department, seven to nine people are using it. The users are mostly in IT.

From my side, I have never reached out to support. 

I have used many different solutions previously. I like solutions that offer the minimal amount of coding possible. 

The initial setup was quite complex for organizations. For individuals or students, however, doing a small setup, it's not too difficult. 

I had some help with the initial setup in order to navigate the complexities. I have done some trial versions by myself, however, as there aren't cybersecurity restrictions for a small setup like that. 

My understanding is the solution is expensive. I don't know the exact price.

There is a 30-day trial and discounts for students. 

I'm an end-user.

I'm working with version 26 or 27.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. 

With this product, you do need to have a good coding background. 

I'd recommend the product to others. It is quite useful. However, the challenge is always the price. Often, when people hear the cost, they show less interest.

I've used SPSS for my doctoral research and in my work as an academic and consultant. It's useful for getting reliable insights into survey data and performing quantitative data analysis. SPSS does the math for statistical research. 

In theory, I could take the same data set, plug it into an Excel spreadsheet, and eventually get the same result. However, it would be unbelievably messy and the chances of getting accurate and reliable results are next to nil. They're just too complex. For example, if you're trying to do multivariate analysis to find correlations between complex and diverse data sets, you can make a scatter plot in Excel, but it's unlikely to yield satisfactory results.

I use both the formula-based input side of it and the more user-friendly side of it, depending on the context. Both of them produce more accurate, reliable, and easy-to-generate results than any other tool that's around. At the same time, SPSS isn't a tool you should use for simple, descriptive analytics.

If you only need to create a bar chart, it's not worth spending the time to clean your data set and go through all the work required to import it into SCSS. While it can obviously do all those functions, it's not designed to make pretty charts. In other words, it's the hardest way to do the simplest of tasks, but it is the easiest way to do the hardest of tasks.

SPSS is the way to go if you have data amenable to quantitative analysis, and you need high-accuracy results. 

SPSS is a tool that's been around since the late 60s, and it's the universal worldwide standard for quantitative social science data analysis. That said, it does seem a bit strange to me that the graphical output functions are so clunky after all these years. The output of charts and graphs that SPSS produces is hideous. 

I'll typically take the output data and recreate the chart in Excel. My consultants expect glossy, readable charts, graphs, tables, etc. SPSS has functions to edit and change color, font, spacing, etc., but it's unbelievably fiddly, and I gave up. It just wasn't worth the time. It was way too time-consuming and difficult. 

Generally, it's a challenging piece of software to use. IBM claims it is easy to learn, use, and apply, but it's not. There is a steep learning curve, but it's worth the time. You can't just plug any data into SPSS and say "Go." It has to be properly formatted and cleaned before it will be used. I guess it's a professional tool.

In the future, I would like to see some a template tool or a data-screening tool that would assist with identifying where and how a data set needs to be cleaned. It wouldn't have to tell you exactly what you need to do, but it would be helpful to have something that points you to what needs to be done in order to make the data more compatible with SPSS.

I used SPSS Statistics extensively from 2016 until 2019, and then I started using it again in 2021.

I can't think of a time when SPSS ever crashed on me.

SPSS can handle whatever you throw at it, whether your data set contains 10,000, 100,000, or a million objects. It's like the heavy artillery of analytical tools. 

SPSS is incredibly easy to set up.

SPSS is an expensive piece of software because it's incredibly complex and has been refined over decades, but I would say it's fairly priced.

I rate IBM SPSS Statistics nine out of 10. There's a steep learning curve, and you need to take the time to develop the required skills and give yourself enough time to start the process of learning on your own. When IBM advertises how easy it is for you to learn, use and apply, that's true in a sense. However, that's only after you pass the first extremely steep learning curve. Once you understand the basics and get used to it, you can do practically anything with it.

I am using IBM SPSS Statistics mainly for analyzing pieces of research and taking simple cross-tabulations, and then on through the multi-variant analysis. It's most useful with multi-variant. There is so much simplistic nonsense produced by people who always do it by social class and nothing else.

The most valuable feature of IBM SPSS Statistics is all the functionality it provides. Additionally, it is simple to do the five-way analysis that you can into multidimensional setup space. It's the multidimensional space facility that is most useful.

IBM SPSS Statistics could improve the visual outputs where you are producing, for example, a graph for a company board of directors, or an advert.

I have been using IBM SPSS Statistics since the late 70s or early 80s.

IBM SPSS Statistics is a stable solution.

I have used IBM SPSS Statistics for hundreds of thousands of cases, but not into the millions. It's worked very well. It is scalable.

There are approximately 100 people are using this solution in the university.

I did not set up the solution. I only need to log in to the universities servers page and download it from there.

The price of IBM SPSS Statistics could improve.

The price is a reason one of the reasons why the university chose IBM SPSS Statistics.

My advice to others is they should get a very small data set, a few hundred cases perhaps, and start off with some frequencies and some cross tabs and build out from there.

I rate IBM SPSS Statistics a nine out of ten.

I use it to analyze social and medical data.

I've found the descriptive statistics and cross-tabs valuable. The very simple correlations and regressions are as well.

The automated statistics testing and principle components analysis are very useful as well.

I've also found the decision tree elements pretty useful too.

IBM SPSS Statistics could be cheaper.

There is a learning curve; it's not very steep, but there is one.

I've been using this solution for about 30 or 40 years.

It's been stable for 40 years.

I've never found a dataset that it couldn't handle, but then, my datasets are mainly, perhaps, about a 100,000 cases. Within that range SPSS Statistics does it very easily.

Technical support staff have been very quick and very good.

Before IBM SPSS Statistics became available, I wrote the code myself in ALGOL, FORTRAN, and BASIC, which were the languages at that time. There was no such thing as a statistics package available then.

For me, the initial setup was completely straightforward. I just downloaded it from the university website.

I was done in under two hours.

We have seen enormous ROI.

It's quite expensive, but they do a special deal for universities. So, I use it through the university.

I looked at SAS and Stata. They just seemed much more cumbersome and difficult to use.

I've used PSPP, the freeware version of SPSS, which is clumsy. However, it still does much the same job, at least, for elementary tasks.

If you do it using the graphical user interface, always click on the save button or paste button, not just the save. For example, if I need to analyze some data before I run it, I set it up using the GUI, I click on paste, and then I run it and save it. When I click paste, it follows all the instructions I've given it in the GUI, but it writes the underlying code. I can save the code, on my disc, and I can get it back later.

This means that you can make your analysis completely replicable. You don't have to redo it, you can just rerun the same program.

I would rate this solution at nine on a scale from one to ten.

Our primary use case is to generally survey results and basic cross-tabulation for any ad hoc requests from key stakeholders. At times, it's a high amount of data but when we run on SPSS, it slows down the computer or the laptop, because if the data is huge, then we need a faster computer. But the corporate computers that we get from our company might not take too much of data load.

The solution is quite robust. I wouldn't pick one most valuable feature, but everything is quite handy. If you want to do a quick analysis, SPSS is quite robust and quicker in terms of providing the output. Python does take large sets of data, and it has more functionalities, but in terms of quick turnaround, I think SPSS is quite good.

From an improvement standpoint, I could compare to PyCharm and see how many other things you can automate things. In PyCharm you use Python and have a lot of packages. SPSS is missing out on some of the packages. In upcoming releases, the solution could be more automated. It should have automation of the packages such as being used in R software and Python packages. They use a tremendous amount of packages. If SPSS can follow that suit, I think it would be very beneficial for SPSS.

I've been working with the solution for more than ten years.

Stability is very good if you have a laptop that has good RAM and a good, powerful laptop, then SPSS can take up really huge amount of data. Otherwise, it slows down the laptop. The limitation is processor issues.

Scalability is also limited, but if you have a high-speed computer, then scalability will be better. But compared to PyCharm and Python and R, it's very limited.

The initial deployment is quite straightforward for SPSS.

I use the solution daily. I use quantitative software for both SPSS and NVivo. I use a lot of functions from SPSS: chi-square, regression analysis, linear regression, multiple regression, cross-tabulation.

SPSS is quicker than comparable software. It starts immediately. For basic and intermediate functions, SPSS is quite good. But once it gets advanced, it's better to use open-source software, like Python and R.

I would rate the solution a seven out of ten, and I would recommend the solution to somebody looking to implement SPSS for statistics for their own organization.

SPSS is a statistical dashboard that gives you a quick view of your data. We're a community college, so we use SPSS for analyzing all kinds of data. It's things like enrollments, transfers, new students, returning students, dropped classes, etc.

The SPSS interface is very accessible and user-friendly. It's really easy to get information in it. I've shared it with experts and beginners, and everyone can navigate it. It's a dashboard where they can get more information. And then, if they want to do a deeper dive into some things, they tell us, and we will work with the research department. We can either add or point to the field or fields and give them some more details. 

Say, for example, you wanted to see things like class registration broken down by area of study. So instead of just looking at enrollment, you can dive into specifics about which courses students are taking and what popular disciplines. We can do all that with SPSS. 

It's also customizable. You can add or remove features as needed to make it fit what you're looking for. Instructions for how to do this are all over our website. For example, on the research page, you see a default report, but you can pretty much create your own version that highlights what you want to show.

I'd like to see them use more artificial intelligence. It should be smart enough to do predictions and everything based on what you input. Right now, that mostly depends on the know-how of the user. But if it had some AI, maybe it could guess what you're looking for based on what you're clicking. So it might make a suggestion like, "I think you're looking for this because you've been hovering on this, this and that" 

For example, say you're clicking on a bunch of data related to enrollment, it might ask if you'd like to see enrollment projections. Or you're looking at diversity and want to break it down by race, religion, gender, and age so you can look for patterns. It should be smart enough.

I've been using IBM SPSS since 2002. 

SPSS is very reliable. So once it's up and running, there's little maintenance unless your network goes down. It's pretty much like Microsoft Office or those standalone programs. They keep running. And I haven't hit a wall where there are so many transactions that it breaks or pauses. You can connect a 2 kilobyte database to a terabyte database. It's just a matter of processing time, but it processes nonetheless. There are no hiccups or anything.

It's running on-premises, so you're only limited by your resources, not theirs. SPSS is a product that sits on the server or your PC, and it works. So if your PC is very old, of course, everything else won't work correctly there.

We haven't had to call IBM tech support. I called IBM once for a discount but never for support. When we switched from a single user to a tiered license a few years back, I recommended adopting special pricing for schools. IBM could verify this easily by looking at the users' school email addresses. Customer service was pretty smooth. Once we opened a ticket, they connected us to their sales, and we got the pricing we were looking for. 

It's like Excel. You connect your input to it, and there you go. Dive in.

You can download it for free, but if you want to enable the professional features, you can buy one license if that's all you need. But if you have many collaborators and want to add more contributors to your site or dashboard, you should think about tiers or a site license, depending on what you need. They have all flavors of licensing.

I rate IBM SPSS Statistics eight out of 10. It's a good starting point if you have a modest budget because you can start for free. Unfortunately, SPSS does not have AI capabilities. And when I say AI capabilities, I mean something similar to what you see on a stock trading platform. Based on the stocks and index funds you've been browsing, it will suggest similar things that you might be looking for. I want SPSS to have that kind of capability because it engages users and saves a lot of time by showing you exactly what you want to see. This could be in newer versions that I haven't used, and maybe I'm missing out. But to my knowledge, they don't have this yet. That's why I rate it an eight. Nowadays, a lot of people are putting AI in their products. Some of it is good, some bad. But if it's good AI, it can be helpful.

My primary use cases are statistic analysis and data governance.

The most valuable features are the small learning curve and its ability to hold a lot of data.

I would like SPSS to be integrated with Cloud Pack For Data

I've been using this solution for fourty years.

This product is stable.

This solution's scalability is good.

The initial setup was very simple and took only a day or two.

Licenses are available on a yearly basis. There are no additional costs, everything is standard.

This is a very flexible product that can be used for numerous purposes. It's also very easy to teach others to use it. I would rate this solution as ten out of ten.

We are using this solution for statistical analysis in our organization for many areas, such as regression, the next-best-offer, and some models for marketing.

The most valuable features are the solution is easy to use, training new users is not difficult, and our usage is comprehensive because the whole service is beneficial.

The solution could improve by providing a visual network for predictions and a self-organizing map for clustering.

I have been using the solution for approximately 10 years.

IBM SPSS Statistics has been stable in our usage.

We used to use the support a long while ago but because we have used the solution for a long time we have not needed to contact them.

The solution is easy to install. We use other tools to deploy the models and we exported the models to other languages, then implement them through the database solutions that our clients have. Most of our clients use either Oracle or SQL but none of them use an IBM solution. The most time-consuming part of the process is preparing the data for modeling.

My advice to others is to be prepared to deal with your data and you most likely will require assistance to help to deploy the models and develop them.

I rate IBM SPSS Statistics an eight out of ten.

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.