In this session, we will discuss the transition from SPSS to R that we made at the Methodology and Statistics unit of the Institute of Psychology of Leiden University.
With this talk, we want to inspire and help other users to introduce R in their Social Sciences bachelors replacing other common software such as SPSS, as well as making connections with other R users willing to improve Data Science/Statistics education in Social Sciences.
We will introduce the main reasons for the change: alignment research-education, didactical purposes, incentivize good research practices (open science, reproducibility), and better career perspectives.
Afterwards, a description of the implementation of R in our bachelor program will be outlined. Here, we aim to provide tips on how to transition from SPSS to R in a social sciences environment, including the experience of other R users working on related education.
We finalize with a summary of the quantitative and qualitative results we have obtained during the first R year.
We anticipate the transition to R to greatly impact our students' future research practices, helping to solve issues such as the reproducibility crisis.