The trends and prospects of statistical packages for the social science (SPSS) as a tool for data analysis in architectural research

Abstract

Research, by all its ramifications, aims not only to provide answers to the ‘what’ or ‘how’, but also to the ‘why’ questions. To be able to answer the posed research questions properly, the researcher need to collect relevant data, code the data, process /analyse the data and finally draw conclusions. Clearly there are tools for collecting data and researchers hardly have problem using them. The apparent difficulty encountered during research process is data analysis. This is due to the fact that it involves mathematical calculations. In most cases, people would rather pay others to do it for them. The advent of computers has made so many things easy. Computer software package have now come to replace lots of other hitherto cumbersome processes. Statistical Packages for the Social Science (SPSS) have been developed to do the statistical analysis of research data. This paper therefore examined the application of SPSS as a tool for statistical data analysis. The paper reviewed literature on SPSS, its development and suitability for architectural research data analysis. The paper concludes that adopting SPSS would make quantitative research in architecture much dependable and replicable.

Keywords: Analytical tool, Architectural research, Data analysis, Prospects, SPSS