If you are a graduate student or somebody with a bit more freedom, who is just looking for some help analyzing data to support their research, then you could choose either program. Would it benefit you, or set you apart from other research/employment candidates, to have a good grasp of both SPSS and RStudio? Do both sets of Lessons and practice using each program. Employers and/or supervisors are still very likely to expect psychology graduates to have SPSS skills. Second, consider what skills you want to develop. Well, first ask your instructor - if they want you to submit assignments that utilize a particular program, or if they are likely to ask you to interpret outputs from a particular program on your examinations, then you’d better complete the Lessons for that program! So which Lessons should you do? SPSS or RStudio? While it is increasing in popularity, it has yet to reach the ubiquitousness of SPSS. This means that anybody can access the software, and its community of users and developers can contribute to improving and updating the software. The more-recent R Project for Statistical Computing (which put together RStudio) offers a free, open-source option.
For this reason, it is still essential for psychology graduates to have a solid grasp of how to use this program. It is still an extremely popular and commonly-used package, and one that you are likely to find is used in labs and workplaces when you start to search for research and employment positions. The history of SPSS Statistics goes back to the 1960s, and for many years it has been a standard for students and researchers working in the social sciences (SPSS, in fact, originally stood for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, but was later changed to Statistical Product and Service Solutions). While both SPSS and RStudio are powerful analytical tools, they operate differently and each have their pros and cons. RStudioĪ free, open-source, non-commercial desktop version of RStudio can be downloaded at: Why does this book cover both SPSS and RStudio? Unless you are in a position where you can get an employer or research supervisor to pay for it, you may want to stick with the cost-free options available to you.
If you really want to download the program (not in a trial version), see some information on student rates at: however, consider carefully how necessary this is before you spend any of your own money, and look carefully at any terms of licensing (i.e., some licenses may only give you access for a set number of months). Downloading SPSS and RStudio SPSS StatisticsĪ trial version of SPSS can be downloaded at:
See the page University of Saskatchewan: Software Access for more details on how to do this. RStudio, from The R Project for Statistical Computing.Īccessing SPSS and RStudio Through Your School.IBM® SPSS® Statistics software (referred to more simply as “SPSS”).Throughout this book you will find Lessons that will take you through procedures to manipulate and analyze given data using two statistical software applications: