survey data analysis

[guarinis]

I need to enter data from surveys conducted before and after a conference. I need to look at the change in answers pre- and post-conference. Do I need to match subjects? Can anyone give me pointers in how to organize this? I am just looking to do something simple in SPSS.

[bluebottle]

I'm sure there are more qualified people here who can answer your question, but for my two cents, matching the pre and post data is not essential but can give you greater insights...

For instance, consider a question that says: 'Do you feel you understand topic X?' for both before and after participants.

If you don't match the data, and analyze the pre and post data separately, you will still be able to make a meaningful statement, for example the proportion of people who could understand topic X increased from 40% pre-conference to 60% post-conference.

However, if you do match the data, you can cross-tabulate the pre and post answers, for instance, with regard to the above question, you could produce a frequency table like this:

...................Post - Yes.....Post - No
Pre - Yes ...........30...............10

Pre - No.............30...............30

And you would be able to see in more detail and make more deductions.