The industry-standard software tool for statistical analysis we will be using in this course is SPSS (now owned by IBM). We have a floating 40-user licence for use on TWU-owned computers (including the Wong Centre, CanIL lab, campus lab in Neufeld, as well as TWU-owned laptops). The current version we have installed is 17. The latest version from IBM is 21.
If you wish to run SPSS on your own computer, you have to purchase your own licence from IBM. You'll probably want the full version of SPSS Statistics Base, not the SPSS Student Version (which is very limited and is meant more for teaching students about statistics than about enabling them to do real research). The Student Version restricts you to 50 variables and a sample size of 1500, and does not do the SPSS command syntax or add-on modules. It will also look a bit different from the SPSS Base that we use in-class.
An option you can consider is the SPSS GradPack, which includes SPSS Base and is available to students on 1-, 2-, or 3-year licenses (you can continue using it until it expires, even after you graduate). GradPack Base includes the unrestricted SPSS Base but no add-on packages.
The SPSS website has a list of online retailers from which you may purchase and download the software; they all offer SPSS 21 GradPack Base for about $70: