Introduction to R

Date:

24/07/2020

Organised by:

Social Research Association

Presenter:

Dr Alexandru Cernat

Level:

Entry (no or almost no prior knowledge)

Contact:

Lindsay Adams
E: lindsay.adams@the-sra.org.uk T: 0207 255 0695

video conference logo

Venue: Online

Description:

This live online course explores how to use R, the popular free statistical software, to prepare, explore and visualise survey data. (Foundation level) This course uses Zoom software.


Introduction/Overview


Working with quantitative data entails being proficient with data management and exploration in order to conduct analysis and gain insights. And while there are many ways to do this, R has emerged as one of the most popular tools. R is a free and open source software for statistics and data science that is increasingly used with social survey data.

In this course you will be introduced to the use of R and will learn how to prepare and visualize data. We will focus on the use of the ‘Tidyverse’ package. Inspired by the concept of “tidy data” this package enables users to import, merge, recode, restructure and visualize data very efficiently.

Half of the course will focus on how to efficiently transform variables and prepare them for analysis while the other half will focus on data exploration (such as tables and correlations) and visualization. The course will combine presentations of the key concepts, hands on practical sessions and discussions of the solutions. In the practical part we will be using real world data to prepare the participants for working with their own data.

 
Objectives
 

By the end of the workshop participants will:

  • Know the main types of objects in R
  • Know how to import data
  • Understand the concept of “tidy data”
  • Know how to clean data effectively
  • Know how to explore and visualise data

 
Topics
 

During the course we will cover:

  • objects in R
  • tidy data
  • importing data
  • cleaning data
  • visualization of data

 
Who will benefit?
 

People who want to learn how to work with quantitative data but have little or no experience.

People with more experience with quantitative data but want to transition from a different statistical software to R.

 
Learning outcomes
 

  • To understand the basic building blocks of R
  • To understand the concept of tidy data
  • To learn how to efficiently transform variables and prepare them for analysis
  • To learn how to work with factor variables
  • To learn how to visualize data using R

 
Course Tutor
 

Alexandru Cernat is a lecturer in social statistics at the University of Manchester since 2016. He received a PhD in survey methodology from the University of Essex and was a post-doc at the National Centre for Research Methods.

His expertise covers: latent variable modelling, non-response, new forms of data, longitudinal data design, longitudinal analysis.

He has taught from multiple organizations such as the National Centre for Research Methods, European Survey Research Association, International Program in Data Science and the African Institute of Mathematical science.

Cost:

£220 Members of SRA pay £165

Website and registration:

Region:

International

Keywords:

Quantitative Data Handling and Data Analysis, Quantitative Software, R

Related publications and presentations:

Quantitative Data Handling and Data Analysis
Quantitative Software

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