NC State provides a very useful tutorial on use of PSPP at http://it.chass.ncsu.edu/tutorials/pspp/ In this web page we annotate and supplement that tutorial, by embedding it page-by-page in this web page. If you click on links within the frames on this page, you may need to refresh this outer page and scroll the inner frames upwards to follow the intended sequence.
Before we start, you will need access to the data used in the tutorial. Many of the examples are based in a sociological data set from "The General Social Survey" from National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NORC_at_the_University_of_Chicago and http://gss.norc.org/). The set you need of the SPSS sav format dataset from 2008:
Now it is time to read the cover page:
and the introduction which will give you a link to PSPP. If you have not already downloaded and installed PSPP, you should do so, now.
The next section of the tutorial will take you through opening GS_2008.sav in PSPP. You should start PSPP now. We will use the interactive version, psppire. When you get to opening the dataset, you probably will have GSS2008.SAV which has more variables and your version of PSPP will probably look a little different. Both the data and the program have improved since the tutorial was written.
In the next section you will practice creating your own dataset. You will want to either do File --> New --> Data or start a fresh copy of PSPP. Again, you may notice some differences between the version you have now and what is in the tutorial. Also, if you are on a mac, when the tutorial tells you to right-click, you may need to hold down the "Command" key and just click.
For the next section we need a dataset of sexes, heights and weights. You can find one at Professor Karl L. Wuensch's SPSS-Data Page at East Carolina University: http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/wuenschk/SPSS/SPSS-Data.htm in the http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/wuenschk/SPSS/SexHeightWeight.sav download link.
There is a minor error in the next section. The first image shows the wrong dataset (a height-weight dataset). The words are right, you want the GS_2008 dataset again for the first example. Then, when you do the regression, go back to the height-weight dataset. Once again, if you are on a mac, when the tutorial tells you to right-click, you may need to hold down the "Command" key and just click.
For the multivariate factor analysis, use the GS_2008 dataset and try as the variables: HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS 18 YRS AND OLDER, AGE OF RESPONDENT, NUMBER OF CHILDREN, NUMBER OF COLLEGE-LEVEL SCI COURSES R HAVE TAKEN, and HIGHEST YEAR OF SCHOOL COMPLETED