Chi-Square Test in SPSS (PASW)

Reference Department
Albert S. Cook Library
Joyce Garczynski jgarczynski@towson.edu 410-704-5168

Background: Chi-square is a statistical test that tests for the existence of a relationship between two
variables. This test can be used with nominal, ordinal, or scale variables, so it is a very versatile test,
but it is sensitive to sample sizes too. It is important to have at least a few cases in each of the
values of both of the variables involved in this test or the results will be skewed.

1) Formulate a hypothesis about your variables

What do you think is the relationship between the two variables? In this example, we want to test if
men and women are significantly different in how they talk about politics. So the independent
variable is gender (represented by gender in the dataset) and the dependent variable is frequency of
political talk (represented by rsclaetalk in the dataset).

2) Select crosstabs

Click on the Analyze tab at the top of the page Select Descriptive Statistics from the list
Select Crosstabs

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3) Select your variables for the test

1) First select the dependent variable. Click on

2 the variable name for the dependent variable in
the left hand column so it is highlighted and
3 then click the arrow next to Row(s) in
between the two sections to move the variable
1 to the rows box.

Next select the independent variable. Click on

the variable name for the independent variable
in the left hand column so it is highlighted and
then click the arrow next to Column(s) in
between the two sections to move the variable
to the columns box.

2) Click on the Statistics button.

3) Click on the Cells button.

4 4) Click on the OK button.

4) Select the chi-square statistic from the Statistics button

1) Select the Chi-square check box from the

menu.

2) Click on the Continue button.

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5) Select column percentages from the Cells button

1) Select the Column check box from the

menu.
1 2) Click on the Continue button.

6) Examine the results

Look at the Chi-Square Tests table to see if there is a significant relationship

1) Look at the number in the Asyp. Sig. column for

Pearson Chi-Square row.

In communication, it is convention that if this value is

less than .05, then the statistic is considered to be
significant (meaning that the researcher can be 95%
1
confident that the relationship between the two variables
is not due to chance).

In this example, since the Sig. value is .576 (which is

greater than .05), we can say that there is not a
significant relationship between gender and the
frequency of political talk.

Look at the Crosstabulation table to see where a significant difference is

1) If your chi-square is significant, look

across the column percentages for the
values of the independent variable. You
should see a definite trend in the
percentages with the percentages for one
value of the dependent variable trending
one way, while the percentages for
1 another value trend in the opposite
direction.

In this example, we do not see a trend

because we do not have a significant chi-
square.

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7) Write up the results in APA style

When reporting the results of a chi-square test within the text of a paper, first write the 2 (chi-square)
value with the degrees of freedom (located under the df column for Pearson Chi-Square row of the
Chi-Square Tests table) and the sample size in parentheses. Then write the significance level.
Note that the exact significance level should be reported unless it is less than .001 (that would be
written p < .001). Also note that otherwise most statistics should be rounded to two decimal places.

For example: A chi-square test was performed and no relationship was found between gender and
the frequency of political talk, X2 (2, N = 170) = 1.10, p =.58.

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