Looking for free alternative to SPSS? Unable to grow a sustainable research pattern with paid data analysis software? R software is one of the best available alternative to SPSS. It’s an open source software that allow student and researcher to do data analysis computation and statistics at no cost. This article will guide you through some fundamentals you need to know to start your data analysis.
Table of Contents
Why you should use this free alternative for your data analysis
If you’re still not sure whether to shift from any paid software to this free one, check out this 4 minutes video that will give you a glimpse on what can you expect by using R.
How to Download and Install R?
To download R, simply go to it’s official website.
https://www.r-project.org/, and choose download options that match your operating systems.
After downloading, you can click the file with .exe extension and install it like another software.
If you need clearer instruction on how to download and install this free alternative to SPSS, watch this video created by R Programming 101 YouTube Channel:
Where to start learning this free alternative to SPSS?
There are many interesting tutorials on YouTube that will give you step by step instructions on how to use this software. If this is your first experience with writing instructions (I wrote it as ‘writing instructions’ instead of ‘writing codes’ to make it less daunting), you might feel awkward in the beginning. But once you get the hang of it, you will easily fall in love with it.
So let’s get started.
Starting a project and importing data
The first thing you need to know is how to start a project and import data needed for your analysis. I recommend you follow the step-by-step tutorial in the following video:
Select, Filter, and Mutate Data
Next thing you want to know is how to select, filter, and mutate your data. Watch this easy-to-follow video:
Using R for statistic with R (t-test and linear regression)
T-test and linear regression are tests that commonly used by researcher to analyze correlation between variables. Practise to do it in R by following the instructions in the video below to get a sense on how to do your statistics in R. By the end of the video you will have confidence to use R in your real projects.
Pro Tips to Filter Data
Now, you’re already comfortable working in R environment. It’s time to level up. This video provides 10 pro tips that will come handy when you need to speed-up your workflow with your data.
Is this free alternative to SPSS better than SPSS?
Depend on how you look at it. When you look at the intuitiveness of user interface, the scale of reception in research community, and the familiarity to researcher, SPSS might still be considered as a better option. But if you look at the ability to scale up your research lab, the ability to collaborate with other researcher, and, sure, the price element, you might want to consider to start learning R. The learning curve is quite steep, but it’s a good investment for your research.
Have you tried using R as an alternative to SPSS? Share your experience in the comment section below.
Written by: Muchammad Taufiq Affandi, lecturer at University of Darussalam Gontor
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