Statistics for Research - L5 - Import Data from Google Forms into SPSS

Importing Google Forms responses into SPSS starts with cleaning the exported data so SPSS can treat survey items as numeric variables instead of text. After opening Google Sheets and switching to “View in Sheets,” the responses appear as text labels like “strongly agree,” “strongly disagree,” “disagree,” “agree,” “neutral,” plus categorical fields such as gender. The workflow uses Google Sheets’ “Edit → Find and replace” to convert each Likert option into the numeric codes used in the questionnaire (e.g., “strongly agree” becomes 5, “strongly disagree” becomes 1, “disagree” becomes 2, “agree” becomes 4, and “neutral” becomes 3). A key detail is avoiding accidental partial matches: “agree” must be replaced with “match entire cell contents” because “agree” appears inside “strongly disagree” and “strongly agree.”

The same replacement approach handles other categorical variables. For gender, the transcript maps “male” to 1 and “female” to 2, but it highlights a common pitfall: if “match entire cell contents” isn’t used consistently, earlier replacements can shift values (e.g., “female” may become “fee 1” after “male” is replaced). The fix is to correct the resulting codes in a follow-up replacement so the final mapping is consistent (female ends up as 2). Once all text-to-number conversions are complete, the cleaned dataset is downloaded from Google Sheets as either XLS or CSV.

Before importing into SPSS, the XLS version may require renaming variables because SPSS can struggle with variable names that include spaces. The transcript demonstrates manually renaming columns in the spreadsheet (e.g., conflict items become CF1, CF2, etc.; community items become CM1, CM2; leadership items become leadership-style labels; team effectiveness items; and exhaustion items like ex1, ex2). It also removes unnecessary columns such as timestamps to keep the dataset focused.

With the XLS file ready, SPSS imports it via “File → Import Excel,” using options like “read variable names from first row of the data.” After import, the data view shows variables correctly populated, enabling downstream statistical analysis.

CSV import follows the same logic but with extra caution about formatting. The transcript notes that if text contains commas, CSV can break fields, so it recommends ensuring the variable naming row is correct and removing the timestamp column if needed. In SPSS, CSV is imported through “File → Import Data → CSV,” again confirming that the first line contains variable names. After these steps, the Google Forms responses—now numeric and properly labeled—are ready for statistical operations in SPSS.