Welcome
All 19 chapters of FROM DATA TO THESIS: Using R for Non-Technical are available, accompanied by interactive Playground exercises and Lecture Slide Decks for teaching and review.
This book follows Elaf, a Master’s student in Educational Psychology, through her thesis. She studies 600 graduate students over four semesters to learn how sleep, stress, and supervisor support relate to their wellbeing, grades, and thoughts of dropping out, and whether a short wellbeing workshop helps.
Every chapter answers one of her research questions. You learn each method the way you will use it: first on a handful of numbers, then on the study data, and then in your own field.
0.1 How to use this book
- Read the chapters in order if you are new to R. Each one builds on the last.
- Run the code yourself. Everything you need is in the
data2thesispackage:
install.packages("https://polla-fattah.github.io/data2thesis_r/downloads/data2thesis_1.1.0.tar.gz",
repos = NULL, type = "source")- Practise in the playground after each chapter.
- Present or review with the interactive lecture slides.
0.2 About the data
Elaf, her study, and her data are fictional. The data was generated by a computer program to look like a realistic survey of graduate students, so that every method in this book has something to find. It describes no real people, and its patterns (for example, that the workshop raised wellbeing, or that students who sleep more have higher grades) were built into the program by the author, not discovered. Nothing in this book is evidence about the wellbeing of real students, and the data and results must not be cited or used as findings about students, universities, or any real situation. The same applies to the counselling service’s records and to the students’ written answers. The data was designed so that every method in the book finds something worth interpreting, including some honest “no effect” results. The script that generates it is published with the book, so anyone can check it or generate it again.