Table of Counts

This example uses the data file survey_sample.sav. See the topic Sample Files for more information.

  1. From the menus, choose:

    Analyze > Tables > Custom Tables...

  2. In the variable list in the table builder, click Confidence in banks... and then Shift-click Confidence in television to select all of the "confidence" variables. (Note: This assumes that variable labels are displayed in alphabetical order, not file order, in the variable list.)
  3. Drag and drop the six confidence variables to the Rows area on the canvas pane.

    This stacks the variables in the row dimension. By default, the category labels for each variable are also displayed in the rows, resulting in a very long, narrow table (6 variables x 3 categories = 18 rows)--but since all six variables share the same defined category labels (value labels), you can put the category labels in the column dimension.

  4. From the Category Position drop-down list, select Row Labels in Columns.

    Now the table has only six rows, one for each of the stacked variables, and the defined categories become columns in the table.

  5. Before creating the table, select (click) Hide for Position in the Summary Statistics group, since the summary statistic label Count isn't really necessary.
  6. Click OK to create the table.
Figure 1. Table of stacked row variables with shared category labels in columns
Table of stacked row variables with shared category labels in columns

Instead of displaying the variables in the rows and categories in the columns, you could create a table with the variables stacked in the columns and the categories displayed in the rows. This might be a better choice if there were more categories than variables, whereas in our example there are more variables than categories.