Data Select Cases

You use "Select Cases" if you want to show some results for only a subset of the respondents.
In our example (see data_select.sav) one of the variables indicates the district where the respondents live; a second variable shows the age of the respondents.

If you are interested in the ages of the respondents from the Lindenholt district only then Select Cases is an appropriate tool.

We open the data file data_select.sav and check the value code for the Lindenholt district.
For example choose from the menu Utilities > Variables to find this out.

So Lindenholt has value 1. That is the code to use when you select the Lindenholt district.
 
From the SPSS menu choose Data > Select Cases; choose "If condition is satisfied" and click the button .
Next fill in the condition you want for your selection in the dialog box as indicated below.

The dialog box that opens when you click on is filled in:

The result:

SPSS has created a filter variable (filter_$); it has the value 1 if the case is selected and the value 0 if the case is not selected.
Furthermore, the case numbers have been crossed out for the cases that are not selected.

On the bottom right of the screen the status bar shows that some filtering is applied (Filter On).

All analyses that will be conducted from this point forward will only use the data of the cases from the Lindenholt district.
This will be so until you turn the filter off again.

For example if we calculate the average age of the respondents:

our result is

This show us that the 192 respondents from Lindenholt are on average 42 years old.

Note 1: Be aware that in the output there is no mentioning of an active filtering. So whenever you use a filter you have to pay attention yourself to whether or not it is still active.

Note 2: To end the filtering choose  Data > Select Cases and tick the radio button for "All cases".