

You should now be able to calculate the chi square statistic in SPSS, and interpret the result that appears the SPSS output viewer. And similarly, there are more atheist vegetarians than would be expected, and fewer atheist meat eaters. There are more Christian meat eaters than would be expected were the null hypothesis (that the variables are independent) true and fewer Christian vegetarians. If you take a look at the crosstabs table (“Eating*Religion Crosstabulation”), you can easily see that the chi square test result is consistent with the data. To put it simply, the result is significant – the data suggests that the variables Religion and Eating are associated with each other. In this case, the p-value is smaller than the standard alpha value, so we’d reject the null hypothesis that asserts the two variables are independent of each other. The result is significant if this value is equal to or less than the designated alpha level (normally. The p-value appears in the same row in the “Asymptotic Significance (2-sided)” column (.010). In this example, the value of the chi square statistic is 6.718. The chi square statistic appears in the Value column of the Chi-Square Tests table immediately to the right of “Pearson Chi-Square”. However, most statistical programmes, such as SPSS Statistics. The results page looks a little complex, but actually isn’t as baffling as it might at first seem. As we will discuss later, there are assumptions and effect sizes we can calculate that. Note: We have a tutorial that deals in more detail with interpreting a chi square test result. Press OK to generate the chi square statistic and crosstabs table. Then under Counts, select Observed and Expected (which will give you observed and expected values when you run the chi square test). Click on the Cells button in the Crosstabs dialog box. The next stage is not required, but it is recommended. If you also want a measure of effect size, select Phi and Cramer’s V in the same dialog box, and then press Continue, otherwise just press Continue. Once you’ve got your variables into their correct boxes, you can set up the chi square test by hitting the Statistics button, and selecting the Chi-square option in the dialog that appears. You can drag and drop, or use the arrows, as above. It doesn’t matter which variable goes into which box. You need to get one of these variables into the Row box, and the other into the Column box. In our example, it’s two variables, but if you have more than two, you’ll need to identify the two you want to test for independence. This will cause the crosstabs dialog to appear. To begin the calculation, click on Analyze -> Descriptive Statistics -> Crosstabs. We want to find out whether the two categorical variables (in this case, Eating and Religion) are associated with each other – that is, are they dependent or independent? The chi square test is appropriate for this task.



#Effect size spss software
Unfortunately, the one your editor wants or is the one most appropriate to your research may not be the one your software makes available (SPSS, for example, reports Partial Eta Squared only, although it labels it Eta Squared in early versions). There are many effect size statistics for ANOVA and regression, and as you may have noticed, journal editors are now requiring you include one.
