SPSS command: SPSS FREQUENCIES

Frequency tables in your browser

FREQUENCIES counts how often each value of a variable occurs and turns the counts into percent, valid percent and cumulative percent.

Try with example data Run on your own file

Free · No account · Files stay on your device · Updated 18 October 2026

What it tells you

Crosstabs runs it on your device with each user-missing code listed separately, summary statistics, SPSS's default HAVERAGE percentiles and an optional bar chart or histogram.

How the answers to a question are distributed, as counts and as a share of all cases and of valid cases.
How much data is missing, with each declared user-missing code (such as 98 "Don't know") on its own row and system-missing shown separately.
Where the middle and the tails of a numeric variable lie: mean, median, mode, quartiles, cut points for equal groups and any percentile you type.
Whether the coding is clean — stray codes, impossible values and empty categories show up immediately in the table.

When to use it

Use it when

The first look at any survey question, before crosstabs or modelling.
Reporting the distribution of a categorical or rating-scale variable, such as satisfaction from 1 to 5.
Checking that recodes, filters and missing-value declarations did what you intended.

Use something else when

Summarising many continuous variables side by side: Descriptives gives one compact table instead of a long frequency table per variable.
Comparing the distribution across groups: use a crosstab with column percentages, or Explore with a factor.
Multiple-response questions stored as several yes/no columns: a single frequency table per column does not give the share of respondents choosing each option among all options.

How to run it in Crosstabs

01
Load the survey file
Open a .sav, CSV or Excel file in the workspace and switch to Statistics mode. Value labels and user-missing codes from a .sav file are kept.
02
Choose Frequencies
In the Describe group, pick Frequencies (FREQUENCIES) and tick one or more variables. String variables get counts only.
03
Tick the statistics
Under Central tendency, Dispersion and Distribution, tick what you need; Mean, Std. Deviation, Minimum and Maximum are on by default.
04
Set percentile values
Tick Quartiles or Cut points for equal groups, type extra percentiles, and keep the HAVERAGE method or choose another; tick Values are group midpoints for grouped data.
05
Order, chart and run
Choose Order frequency tables by, a Bar chart or Histogram, and whether to Display frequency tables, then click Run. Declare any workspace weight as a frequency or sampling weight first.

Run Frequencies in your browser

Worked example

Computed by the Crosstabs engine from the synthetic data below when this page was built — not typed in.

Try with example data

Data

50 synthetic answers to a five-point satisfaction question (1 = very dissatisfied … 5 = very satisfied). Code 9 ("No answer") is declared user-missing and some answers are blank (system-missing). Drawn with a fixed seed.

Statistics

Item	satisfaction
N Valid	46
N Missing	4
Mean	3.41
Median	4.00
Mode	4
Std. Deviation	1.240
Percentile 25	2.00
Percentile 50	4.00
Percentile 75	4.00

satisfaction

Item	Category	Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
Valid	1 Very dissatisfied	4	8.0	8.7	8.7
Valid	2 Dissatisfied	8	16.0	17.4	26.1
Valid	3 Neutral	8	16.0	17.4	43.5
Valid	4 Satisfied	17	34.0	37.0	80.4
Valid	5 Very satisfied	9	18.0	19.6	100.0
Missing	9 No answer	3	6.0
Missing	System	1	2.0

Code 9 is listed under Missing and excluded from Valid Percent.

How to read it

46 of 50 answers are valid. The most common answer is 4 (37.0% of valid answers); the median is 4 and the quartiles are 2 and 4. Because Percent uses all 50 rows and Valid Percent only the 46 valid ones, report Valid Percent when describing opinion.

Output tables explained

Statistics: Valid and missing N plus the statistics you ticked, one column per variable. Footnotes flag multiple modes, grouped-data medians and a non-default percentile method.
Frequency table (titled with the variable label): Frequency, Percent, Valid Percent and Cumulative Percent for every valid value, then each user-missing code and System under Missing. Percent uses all cases; Valid Percent excludes missing ones.
Bar chart or histogram: An optional chart of the counts; the histogram is drawn only for numeric variables.

Assumptions and notes

Each row is one case; a value is counted once per case unless a frequency weight is declared.
Missing values are excluded variable by variable, so each variable's Valid Percent has its own base.
A frequency weight must hold whole, non-negative counts; under a sampling weight standard errors are withheld.

How the results are validated

The FREQUENCIES statistics share the descriptives engine, which is checked on 13 reference samples generated with NumPy 2.5 and SciPy 1.18: mean within 1e-12, variance and SD within 1e-11, skewness and kurtosis within 1e-10, and all five percentile definitions within 1e-12 of the matching NumPy methods (tolerances scaled by the size of the value). Unit tests cover user-missing percent bases, count ordering, grouped percentiles, multiple modes and weights. Validation evidence

Questions

What is the difference between Percent and Valid Percent?

Percent divides by every case, including missing ones. Valid Percent divides only by cases with a valid answer, so it is the figure to quote for opinion questions. Cumulative Percent adds up Valid Percent in the displayed order.

Why is code 98 listed under Missing?

It is declared user-missing in the data dictionary (for example "Don't know"). Such codes are counted and shown on their own row but kept out of Valid Percent and the statistics.

Which percentile method matches SPSS?

HAVERAGE, the weighted average at (W+1)p, is the SPSS default and is selected by default. WAVERAGE, ROUND, EMPIRICAL and AEMPIRICAL are also available for comparison with other definitions.

Can I sort categories from most to least common?

Yes. Set Order frequency tables by to Descending counts. Cumulative Percent then follows the sorted order.

Does the file leave my computer?

No. The file is parsed and the tables are computed in your browser; nothing is uploaded to Crosstabs servers.

Run Frequencies on your own data

Open a .sav, CSV or Excel file. Everything runs in your browser; the file never leaves your device.

Open the workspace

SPSS is a trademark of IBM Corp. Crosstabs is not affiliated with or endorsed by IBM.