Marta García Granero: Good question. I subscribed to the list in 2000 and discovered again the beauty and power of SPSS syntax. I have a learned a lot from people like Ray Levesque, Hector Maletta, Jan Spousta, Richard Ristow and others. In turn, I have tried to help too, with both my statistical and mathematical background.

I have been faced with students absolutely reluctant to learn statistics, so, when I meet someone really interested, I can't help it, I have to answer. It must be the teacher inside me. You get some unexpected rewards, sometimes.

Shortly after September 11, 2001, while I still was in the "silent period"…when you read messages but don't have confidence enough to answer any question…someone asked for advice on Latin square designs. The question wasn't really SPSS related, it was general, and that’s why I answered as that was my only field of expertise then. After a short exchange of e-mails, I was able to give him advice on how to deal with his Ph.D. data design and the statistical analysis involved using SPSS. It finally turned out to be something not related with Latin squares at all. It was a slightly complicated one-way ANOVA that required the use of orthogonal contrasts.

When he thanked me, he said he lived in New York, and that after September 11 he hadn’t made much progress and he felt really bad. He had been stuck with the statistical analysis of his data, unable to finish and feared that he wouldn't be able to get his Ph.D.—then he said that because of my help he was confident he would. I felt really well for some days.

King Douglas: Say we are coming to you for help with an SPSS problem. What's the best way for us to frame our question?

Marta García Granero: A sample of your dataset, and a clear explanation, both of your goal, and of the way the data were collected, including sampling issues, etc.

King Douglas: To whom do you turn if and when you need help solving a problem that involves SPSS?

Marta García Granero: Sometimes I still ask for help in the list for something like, for instance, complex file merging or string manipulation. But I try to solve the problem on my own first: I read the online help, the syntax guide, go to Raynald's web site, read Ray's book, I play a bit, until I surrender and ask for help. The fact that I get good replies makes me be willing to contribute in return, if I can.

King Douglas: Do you have a preferred method of displaying SPSS output in a report?

Marta García Granero: I don’t use SPSS output directly. I try to conform to guidelines I have read. For instance, "How to report statistics in Medicine" is an excellent book in the field of Biostatistics. I export results to Word, mainly, and then I do an extensive reformatting of the results.