Need advice.. do all of you use SPSS?

Is is essential as a method of your own areas of research/teaching/career progression (or even starting!). If your drawn to qualitative side and or it produces good quality findings, is that okay? I ask because it is no longer my friend and I don't think it is doing my study any justice or the direction I wish to study further in my subject area.

I have also struggled to learn it and enjoy it.

Can you be a social research assistant/lecturer/research associate etc without knowing SPSS/Using it?

thank you so much if you can help
K

No.

It is only one of many software packages for statistical analysis of quantitative data. Which package a researcher uses depends on the nature/complexity of what they are trying to do and what the conventions in their field are. For example, most people in my field use Stata or R, as SPSS probably wouldn't handle the kind of analysis we do. Others may use SAS, MPlus, Matlab....there are many packages.

If you only have small amounts of quantitative data, I would stick with SPSS as it is more user friendly than many packages (from what I have heard). These things do become easier with time. I would just ask you one question though - is it definitely SPSS that you are struggling with, or are you perhaps finding the statistical concepts themselves confusing? Either can be dealt with, but different training might be required in each case.

As HazyJane said, it's just one package among many. More importantly, you should know your datasets inside and out, have a good grasp of the statistical method you are going to use, and can justify why you are using it. The problem with packages like SPSS is that they spew out reams of statistics, most of which you can discard. If using a simple test (e.g. ANOVA, t-test), you are better off doing the calculations manually, because at least you know how you got the result, rather than simply clicking an ok button.