Book excerpt: Written in an easy-to-read, straightforward manner, Next Steps with SPSS introduces readers to intermediate and advanced SPSS skills. These skills are introduced and illustrated with sample programs designed to apply powerful techniques in data handling and analysis, with the output from these programs presented and interpreted. The book is organized so that it builds increasingly advanced syntax coding skills, starting with the handling of complex data files and then moving to coverage of looping and macro skills. The book then switches to more windows-oriented skills suitable for working with SPSS output (as in pivot tables and interactive graphics) and for running SPSS in an alternative mode (as in a production facility). The book then returns to coding skills by introducing the more advanced topics of the scripting facility (which has broad application to handling data and creating output) and the matrix command language.