WHAT IS DATA?

Cases, Variables, Information, and Measures

September 23, 2025

Data is information that you put into a computer for processing to answer a question you are interested in. Data and information are not the same thing. We usually associate the result produced by a computer with information. Accordingly, we can differentiate data from information.

Some types of data—Numeric (e.g., marks, age, height, length, salary, weight, annual income, temperature), Categorical (e.g., gender, marital status, education level, employee satisfaction, economic status, level of agreement), and Text (SPSS Data Type is String. e.g., name, id number, street name, house number)—are widely used. You can code the values of categorical variables with numerical values (SPSS Data Type: Numeric).

Figure (i)

Three related pieces of information are: a. name: "Mike", b. gender: "Male", c. Age:20.

Figure (ii)

Each row, in the example above (figure ii), is an observation that represents a student. The example shows three related pieces of information (Example: "Mike", "Male", and "20") about each student. There are 4 different students. Rows are also called cases.

A column (considered as being identical with a feature) contains a series of values arranged one after another. These values are the same type (or with the same characteristic). A column name is the generic term or the common name used for the list of values contained in that column. Columns or features about which the information has been collected are called variables. There are 4 cases and 3 variables.

Some properties of the SPSS Variable

• Name: Short unique name of the variable
• Data Type: Numeric, String, etc.
• Labels: The text that you enter will appear in a SPSS output viewer instead of the variable name. e.g.: We know the meaning of the descriptive label "Date of Birth". "Date of Birth" is not a valid SPSS variable name. However, “DOB” is suitable for a variable name. The short variable name “DOB” is preferable to Date_of_Birth.
• Values: You can add meaningful text labels for the values of a categorical variable. Instead of the numeric values, the labels can be displayed. E.g., instead of the gender variable’s values 0 and 1, SPSS can display “Male” and “Female”. You can toggle between numbers and text with the “Value Labels” icon (tool bar).
• Measure: What are the levels of measurement?