COMPARE Subcommand (EXAMINE command)

COMPARE controls how boxplots are displayed. This subcommand is most useful if there is more than one dependent variable and at least one factor in the design.

GROUPS. For each dependent variable, boxplots for all cells are displayed together. With this display, comparisons across cells for a single dependent variable are easily made. This is the default.

VARIABLES. For each cell, boxplots for all dependent variables are displayed together. With this display, comparisons of several dependent variables are easily made. This is useful in situations where the dependent variables are repeated measures of the same variable (see the following example) or have similar scales, or when the dependent variable has very different values for different cells, and plotting all cells on the same scale would cause information to be lost.

Example

EXAMINE VARIABLES=GPA1 GPA2 GPA3 GPA4 BY MAJOR   /COMPARE=VARIABLES.

• The four GPA variables are summarized for each value of MAJOR.
• COMPARE=VARIABLES groups the boxplots for the four GPA variables together for each value of MAJOR.

Example

EXAMINE VARIABLES=GPA1 GPA2 GPA3 GPA4 BY MAJOR /COMPARE=GROUPS.

• COMPARE=GROUPS groups the boxplots for GPA1 for all majors together, followed by boxplots for GPA2 for all majors, and so on.