For a student who is a beginner in quantitative research and statistics, which is the better statistical tool to start: R or IBM SPSS? Why?

Currently, I am writing my research design. However, I am still indecisive on what statistical tool should I use for the data analysis. I tried looking up on the internet and there are disparate answers to my question.

I have noticed that R (Programming Language) and IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences are two of the recurring tools that are mentioned when it comes to this question. So, which is better? I need some insights so I can settle on an answer to this dilemma.

Thanks in advance!

Topic data-analysis research beginner statistics r

Category Data Science

1
answered at

I suggest to use R since it is open source and very powerful and thus is used by many companies and researchers. R does not only allow to deal with large amounts of data, it also allows to do state-of-art statistical analysis, including Tensorflow/Keras etc.

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answered at

I would go for R over SPSS any day. Anything you can do with SPSS can be done with R, the inverse is not necessarily true. The advantage of using R over SPSS in my opinion is that R is a full-fletched programming language, where SPSS is more a graphical user interface for doing statistics. In R you can never accidentally click the wrong option, and still get (wrong) output. I guess it comes down to what your goals are. If you really want to become adept at data analysis, maybe also in your professional career, R might be the better option. However, it probably has a steeper learning curve than SPSS. So if you just want to finish your research and never look back, SPSS might be the go-to option for you. None of the above is set in stone, it is just the way I see it. Both are powerful tools to do statistical analyses. Hope that helps.

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