SPSS (originally, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) was released in its first version in 1968 after being developed by Norman H. Nie and C. Hadlai Hull. Norman Nie was then a political science postgraduate at Stanford University, and now Research Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Chicago. SPSS is among the most widely used programs for statistical analysis in social science. It is used by market researchers, health researchers, survey companies, government, education researchers, marketing organizations and others. The original SPSS manual (Nie, Bent & Hull, 1970) has been described as one of "sociology's most influential books". In addition to statistical analysis, data management (case selection, file reshaping, creating derived data) and data documentation (a metadata dictionary is stored in the datafile) are features of the base software.
- IBM bought SPSS (the company) in 2010, then raised the price of the software and stopped offering lower-cost academic licenses. As of Feb. 2011, New York State is in negotiations with IBM to acquire the rights to sell SPSS. But currently, no NYS entity is entitled to sell SPSS. UB expects that an agreement will be in place in 2-4 months.
- UBIT recommends buying student or faculty personal licenses from http://www.onthehub.com.
- Aidong Zhang, researcher.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spss
- http://www.spss.com/
- http://www.onthehub.com/spss/
