Where can I get my hands on an SPSS authorisation code?

Can anyone help?

When I was at university I used SPSS; I have the installation CD but since then I've reformatted my computer and no longer have the licence/authorisation codes. It's SPSS Statistics 20. Is there any way of getting it without getting in touch with my former university?

More than likely you had a student price discounted version of a university site license. Such licenses are tied to the university site, and not for use outside of university studies/research.

SPSS had been acquired by IBM awhile back, can be sourced online, and is a for-profit corporation that typically charges considerably more for site licenses outside of university studies.

Capt'n Midnight

Depending on what you are trying to do have a look at these

http://salstat.sourceforge.net/ ( lists other packages too )

https://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/pspp.html

http://www.r-project.org/

Black Swan

Black Swan wrote: »

More than likely you had a student price discounted version of a university site license. Such licenses are tied to the university site, and not for use outside of university studies/research.

SPSS had been acquired by IBM awhile back, can be sourced online, and is a for-profit corporation that typically charges considerably more for site licenses outside of university studies.

Yeah that's most likely the case. Any idea how much they charge, roughly, for someone who wants to use SPSS outside of university studies? The IBM website makes you jump through hoops just to get a price.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Depending on what you are trying to do have a look at these

http://salstat.sourceforge.net/ ( lists other packages too )

https://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/pspp.html

http://www.r-project.org/

Much appreciate the links Captn. Very interesting, some of those might work for some of my purposes. Amazing that they've got pretty much the same capacities as SPSS but for free.

At the same time, I also have to do more elaborate stats as well and don't have the time or mental energy to re-learn a new system for that. I'm also a bit rusty, and my textbook is based on SPSS.

MonkeyBalls

MonkeyBalls wrote: »

Yeah that's most likely the case. Any idea how much they charge, roughly, for someone who wants to use SPSS outside of university studies? The IBM website makes you jump through hoops just to get a price.

Pricing I've found for the IBM SPSS Statistics Grad Pack 21.0 Base Windows or Mac 12 month license for students currently attending university ranges from 65 to 91 USD, but the non-university license would be considerably more. You would have to contact SPSS IBM for a single user license price quote to get an exact cost. Exploring their site, the lowest license fee for 12 months I have found was 2,320.00 USD, which seems way, way too pricy. You may want to explore other statistical packages that are either free or more reasonably priced.

jackpension

Just use a trial version - you get 14 days free!!

Ostrom

I can't discourage you enough from adopting SPSS if you plan on using a stats package long term. Stata student license is €129, and the documentation and intuitive help dialogs are worth the asking price alone. Invest a week getting to grips with the syntax and it will save you years of hassle. There are other *ways* to acquire it of course...

dh0011

OP, there are a lot of opinions floating around here. I have a lot of experience in a variety of statistics packages [I am a statistician finishing my PhD in statistics]. If you say what sort of things you were using SPSS for I can give you advice as to which software is the best to use. People blindly saying one package is the best is silly. For example stata is designed for bio statistics and epi. SAS is approved by the FDA and is the one to go for if you are doing drug trials. R is free and can do anything but has a text based interface which can be difficult to get used to at the start.

Where abouts are you based. It is posible sometimes to get a software licence free from these companies if you ask nicely.

Ostrom

dh0011 wrote: »

OP, there are a lot of opinions floating around here. I have a lot of experience in a variety of statistics packages [I am a statistician finishing my PhD in statistics]. If you say what sort of things you were using SPSS for I can give you advice as to which software is the best to use. People blindly saying one package is the best is silly. For example stata is designed for bio statistics and epi. SAS is approved by the FDA and is the one to go for if you are doing drug trials. R is free and can do anything but has a text based interface which can be difficult to get used to at the start.

Where abouts are you based. It is posible sometimes to get a software licence free from these companies if you ask nicely.

There is certainly no ideal program, but SPSS has been a consistent let down in terms of functionality, tech support, and user friendliness (I think they removed all time-series capabilities a few versions ago).