DESCRIPTIVES Subcommand (REGRESSION command)

DESCRIPTIVES requests the display of correlations and descriptive statistics. By default, descriptive statistics are not displayed.

  • The minimum specification is simply the subcommand keyword DESCRIPTIVES, which obtains MEAN, STDDEV, and CORR.
  • If DESCRIPTIVES is specified with keywords, only those statistics specifically requested are displayed.
  • Descriptive statistics are displayed only once for all variables named or implied on VARIABLES.
  • Descriptive statistics are based on all valid cases for each variable if PAIRWISE or MEANSUBSTITUTION has been specified on MISSING. Otherwise, only cases with valid values for all variables named or implied on the VARIABLES subcommand are included in the calculation of descriptive statistics.
  • If regression through the origin has been requested (subcommand ORIGIN), statistics are computed as if the mean were 0.

NONE. No descriptive statistics. This is the default if the subcommand is omitted.

DEFAULTS. MEAN, STDDEV, and CORR. This is the same as specifying DESCRIPTIVES without specifications.

MEAN. Display variable means in the Descriptive Statistics table.

STDDEV. Display variable standard deviations in the Descriptive Statistics table.

VARIANCE. Display variable variances in the Descriptive Statistics table.

CORR. Display Pearson correlation coefficients in the Correlations table.

SIG. Display one-tailed probabilities of the correlation coefficients in the Correlations table.

BADCORR. Display the correlation coefficients only if some coefficients cannot be computed.

COV. Display covariance in the Correlations table.

XPROD. Display sum of squares and cross-product deviations from the mean in the Correlations table.

N. Display numbers of cases used to compute correlation coefficients in the Correlations table.

ALL. All descriptive statistics.

Example

REGRESSION DESCRIPTIVES=DEFAULTS SIG COV
 /VARIABLES=AGE,FEMALE,YRS_JOB,STARTPAY,SALARY
 /DEPENDENT=SALARY
 /METHOD=ENTER STARTPAY
 /METHOD=ENTER YRS_JOB.
  • The variable means, standard deviations, and number of cases are displayed in the Descriptive Statistics table and the correlation coefficients, one-tailed probabilities of the correlation coefficients, and covariance are displayed in the Correlations table.
  • Statistics are displayed for all variables named on VARIABLES, even though only variables SALARY, STARTPAY, and YRS_JOB are used to build the equations.
  • STARTPAY is entered into the equation by the first METHOD subcommand. YRS_JOB is entered by the second METHOD subcommand.