When a committee member or reviewer wants you to redo an analysis, it will save tons of time to have those variable labels right there.Ĥ. As entrenched as you are with your data right now, you will forget what those variable names refer to within months. Anyone else who uses your data–lab assistants, graduate students, statisticians–will immediately know what each variable means.ģ. If your paper code sheet ever gets lost, you still have the variable names.Ģ. I know you want to get right to your data analysis, but using Variable Labels will save so much time later.ġ. There are good reasons for using Variable Labels right in the data set. On questionnaires, I often use the actual question. You then use Variable Labels to give a nice, long description of each variable. SPSS doesn’t limit variable names to 8 characters like it used to, but you still can’t use spaces, and it will make coding easier if you keep the variable names short. Using these every time is good data analysis practice. SPSS Variable Labels and Value Labels are two of the great features of its ability to create a code book right in the data set.

Do factor analysis in spss 21