Learn to Use Two-Way Scatter Plots in SPSS With From the Canadian Fuel Consumption Report (2015)

© 2015 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods Datasets. SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2015 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 Learn to Use Two-Way Scatter Plots in SPSS With Data From the Canadian Fuel Consumption Report (2015)

How-to Guide for IBM® SPSS® Software

Introduction In this guide you will learn how to produce a two-way scatter of two continuous variables. You will find links to the example dataset and you are encouraged to replicate this example. An additional practice example is suggested at the end of this guide. The example assumes you have already opened the data file in IBM® SPSS® Statistics software (SPSS).

Contents

1. Two-Way Scatter Plot 2. An Example in SPSS: CO2 Emissions and Fuel Consumption 2.1 The SPSS Procedure 2.2 Exploring the SPSS Output 3. Your Turn

1 Two-Way Scatter Plot A two-way scatter plot is a graphical method used to explore the relationship between two continuous variables. One of the variables defines the horizontal axis (often called the X-axis) of the plot and the other defines the vertical axis

Page 2 of 9 Learn to Use Two-Way Scatter Plots in SPSS With Data From the Canadian Fuel Consumption Report (2015) SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2015 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 (often called the Y-axis) of the plot. Each observation in the dataset is plotted within the figure based on the values it has for both of the variables. In other words, the values of the two variables under consideration define the coordinates, or location, within the figure where each case will be plotted.

Researchers construct two-way scatter plots to explore the relationship between two variables, to identify observations that are outliers, and as a diagnostic tool for more complicated statistical methods such as multiple regression.

An Example in SPSS: CO2 Emissions and Fuel Consumption This example explores the relationship between automobile CO2 emissions and fuel consumption under city driving conditions using two variables from the 2015 Fuel Consumption Report from Natural Resources Canada:

• The CO2 emissions of an automobile (co2emissions), measured in grams per kilometer. • The city fuel consumption rate for each automobile (fuelusecity), measured in liters per 100 kilometers.

The CO2 emissions of the automobile are measured in grams per kilometer. In this dataset, it has a of approximately 244.69 with a of about 55.70. The variable fuelusecity ranges between 4.5 and 30.60 in this sample dataset, with a mean of 12.53.

Both of these are continuous variables, making them appropriate for producing a two-way scatter plot.

2.1 The SPSS Procedure You can produce a two-way scatter plot in SPSS in several ways, one of which we explore in detail here. Begin by selecting from the menu:

Page 3 of 9 Learn to Use Two-Way Scatter Plots in SPSS With Data From the Canadian Fuel Consumption Report (2015) SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2015 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 Graphs → Builder

This opens a Chart Builder dialog box. Figure 1 shows what this looks like in SPSS.

(Note: you may get a message asking you to define the for variables in your dataset before you can proceed to building the chart. If you get this message, typically you can select “OK” and then “Scan Data” and SPSS will execute this task for you automatically.)

Figure 1: Selecting Chart Builder from the Graphs menu in SPSS

Page 4 of 9 Learn to Use Two-Way Scatter Plots in SPSS With Data From the Canadian Fuel Consumption Report (2015) SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2015 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1

In the lower half of the Chart Builder dialog box, select from the lower left menu “Scatter/Dot”. Eight icons for scatter plots appear. The one on the top left is for a simple scatter plot. Drag and drop that icon up into the open box in the upper half of this dialog box where the instructions say “Drag a Gallery chart here…”.

When you do, an Element Properties dialog box will open. You can ignore that for this example.

Next, drag and drop the variable you want plotted on the X-axis into the text box labeled “X-Axis?” For this example, the variable is fuelusecity. Next, drag and drop

Page 5 of 9 Learn to Use Two-Way Scatter Plots in SPSS With Data From the Canadian Fuel Consumption Report (2015) SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2015 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 the co2emissions variable into the text box labeled “Y-Axis?” Note that SPSS will display the variable labels (e.g. “Fuel Use City” and “CO2 Emissions” in this case) and not the actual variable names if such labels are available. Figure 2 shows what this looks like in SPSS.

Figure 2: Building a two-way scatter plot in the Chart Builder dialog box in SPSS.

Once done, click OK to produce the plot.

Exploring the SPSS Output

Page 6 of 9 Learn to Use Two-Way Scatter Plots in SPSS With Data From the Canadian Fuel Consumption Report (2015) SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2015 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 Executing the procedure above using the variable named fuelusecity on the X- axis and the variable named co2emissions on the Y-axis produces the scatter plot shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Two-way scatter plot of city fuel consumption and CO2 emissions from automobiles, Fuel Consumption Report, Natural Resources Canada, 2015.

Figure 3 shows a clear relationship between these two variables. Relatively higher city driving fuel consumption rates are associated with relatively higher CO2 emissions across the board. The plot in Figure 3 shows a positive relationship between these two variables that appears to be pretty linear. However, there does

Page 7 of 9 Learn to Use Two-Way Scatter Plots in SPSS With Data From the Canadian Fuel Consumption Report (2015) SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2015 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 1 appear to be a subset of observations that separate from the rest – the group that is lower and to the right of the large set. Further exploration revealed that all of the automobiles in that smaller group are fueled by Ethanol E85 rather than traditional gasoline or diesel fuel.

Two common statistical measures of correlation – the Pearson and the Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient – can be computed to measure the association between two variables (see the SAGE Research Methods Datasets modules on these methods). The Pearson correlation coefficient assumes a linear relationship between the two variables in question while the Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient only assumes a monotonic relationship. Figure 3 suggests that using the Pearson correlation coefficient to measure the association between these two variables would be appropriate, though researchers might want to compute the measure separately for automobiles that consume Ethanol E85 and those that do not.

3 Your Turn Download this sample dataset and see if you can replicate the results. Then repeat the process replacing the city fuel consumption measure with a variable named fuelusehwy that measures automobile fuel consumption under highway driving conditions.

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