Statistical Programs used in psych research

[SarahSocPsy]

Hello,

I was wondering if any of you could help me figure out which statistical program(s) is typically used for psychology research whether at the graduate or professional level. I'm familiar with SPSS and excel and I have not heard of any other common stats software, yet I have no idea what psychology students at other universities are using.

[LJK]

I generally use SPSS (PASW these days) and excel at this point. Some people/schools use SAS as an alternative to PASW. Other programs I have heard of people using but haven't myself: Matlab and R. R is free and most stats people are excited about it. It got integrated into the stats classes at my MS program (after I took a PASW based class) along with SAS. I think that it R more modeling based than straight stats but I'm not exactly sure. Additionally there is a program G*Power which is a free program specifically for calculating power.

Edited February 11, 2011 by LJK

[lewin]

AMOS is also handy to learn, if you know the more complex stats that it can perform (Structural Equation Modelling, Hierarchical Linear Modelling, etc.).

I second the above: SPSS, SAS, R. Excel is really handy too, not for stats but for graphing and editing data. SPSS's data editor stinks.

[eat.climb.love]

Hello,

I was wondering if any of you could help me figure out which statistical program(s) is typically used for psychology research whether at the graduate or professional level. I'm familiar with SPSS and excel and I have not heard of any other common stats software, yet I have no idea what psychology students at other universities are using.

When I worked in a few psych labs everyone used SPSS. I learned how to actually use the syntax (in addition to the point and click option) because it is a lot faster once you get comfortable with it. My professors highly encouraged us to know both the point and click and the syntax for SPSS.

R is handy but set up differently than SAS/SPSS. It is more of an actual program than statistical software. If you want to give it a go, it is free and totally worth learning. I have always been able to use SAS for free by being a student/working but if I didn't have the opportunity, I would definitely pick up R.

There are a bunch of books that would help. I used a book by Cody and Smith for SAS, I believe. It was a great book. This website is pretty good for SPSS: http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/SPSS/

Also if you are planning on doing syntax, download something like Notepad ++. I like to do my code in that and then copy and paste to wherever I am going to run the code.

[whitecarnation]

SPSS (PASW), SAS, BMDP.

[honkycat1]

SPSS is pretty common and everyone knows it, even undergraduate research method courses teaches SPSS.

In terms of statistical analysis, R is free and a open source software that a lot of people use. It has a lot of cool packages etc.

our lab uses matlab for some stuff too, and modeling but some of its function is moving away from the standard "analysis".

I don't know how many people uses excel for its macro and VBA functions, I think its pretty cool in terms of making some nice user interfaces with its forms function and a little bit of coding. our lab actually run some studies using some stuff I programed from VBA in excel.

[repatriate]

SPSS (now actually back to being called SPSS by IBM) is probably the most commonly used in social psychology, but R and SAS, as others have mentioned, are commonly pushed by the quant people. Matlab seems to be liked by the cognitive people (here, anyway). For structural equation modeling, LISREL is often used.

[neuropsychosocial]

Does anyone use STATA anymore?

[t_ruth]

We use Stata in our program (Ed Psych), and also AMOS. For more complicated SEM, Mplus is used at my school.

[iopsych]

SPSS, HLM, LISREL, AMOS, and as some have mentioned SAS. Those are the common one's.