ISSR Methodology Workshop | Introduction to R and R Markdown

Instructor: Catie Kitrinos

This workshop is designed for participants new to coding in R but with experience in research and data analysis generally. The goal of the workshop is to develop a basic, functioning skillset in R (a programming language popular in the social and life sciences for data analysis and visualization) and R Markdown (an R file format which can print analytical results and visualizations from R with its corresponding code for sharing with collaborators). 

We will begin by learning to complete basic tasks in R (simple addition, creating objects, reading data files) and then build up to doing basic data analyses (student’s T-tests) and visualizations (scatterplots, bar graphs, boxplots). Then, we will move on to producing more complex visualizations using R Markdown’s ‘chunk’ structure (a configuration which allows large blocks of code to be conveniently run together). Finally, we will learn to produce easily shareable .html files containing customizable output from the R Markdown file (code chunks, graphics, notes, warnings, and messages) to share with collaborators.

No prior R experience is expected, however, participants should be familiar with spreadsheets and basic quantitative data analysis (T-tests, measures of central tendency such as mean, median). Participants will be expected to download R and R Studio prior to the workshop.