Impact of support of teacher and compatibility with needs of study on usefulness of SPSS by students

•An expanded Technology Acceptance Model of SPSS acceptance is proposed.•Increasing perceived usefulness of statistics will increase usefulness of SPSS.•Support of teacher significantly contributes to the easier use of SPSS.•Increasing compatibility with the study needs will increase intention to use SPSS.•Differences between undergraduates and postgraduates were identified.

The aim of this study is to expand the TAM (Technology Acceptance Model) in the research of different aspects of acceptance of software packages used for statistical analysis (SPSS), by including three factors: perceived support from the teacher, perceived compatibility with the academic needs of students of economics and business and perceived usefulness of statistics. The study shows that (i) the perceived usefulness of statistics plays an important role in perceiving the usefulness of SPSS and the ease of its use; (ii) support of teacher significantly contributes to the easier use of SPSS; (iii) that perceived compatibility with the academic needs of students positively impacts the perceived usefulness of SPSS and the intention to use it in the future, and (iv) higher the perceived ease of use of SPSS, higher on average its perceived usefulness. We also found that there are almost no significant differences between the conceptual model for undergraduate and postgraduate students. However we found that there are statistically significant differences between undergraduate and postgraduate students regarding perception of the usefulness of SPSS and usefulness of statistics.