Re: A suggestion to increase the number of PSPP users at universities

[John Darrington]

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 05:52:51PM +0000, Carlos Canhoto wrote:
     
     The university where I teach is being forced by the portuguese
     government to use free software whenever it is possible.
     However, they argue that SPSS has no cost-effective alternative
     and they are asking all the staff for suggestions of how to
     sustain the argument. I will, of course, answer that there is an
     alternative, PSPP, and that there is no reason to keep SPSS.
     
     But I think it would be useful if the PSPP team could publish, on
     the PSPP site, a list (desirably growing) of universities that
     use PSPP. That could help wherever in the world universities and
     other research centers are resisting to the use of free software.
     

Well of course, the problem is, we don't have any official information
about what universities use what.  I have noticed a growing number of
university web pages mention PSPP on  course prospectus pages, but that
is not quite the same.  

There are a number of wikis about pspp advocacy which might be a more
suitable place to start such a list.  Maybe you could ask on address@hidden
who could contribute to such a list.

Incidently the  FAQ page does have links to a few referreed papers in 
which the authors have stated PSPP was used for the analysis.  That might
go some way to convince the doubters.

The distractors will of course say that PSPP can't perform everything
they need - they may be right.  I suggest that you draw up a list of
all the SPSS features that your institution uses, and whether PSPP can
do them.  Let us know the missing features.

J'



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