Dealing with other data structures is probably very hard, but comes naturally to R. SPSS has 'Syntax', 'Scripts' and is also scriptable in Python.Īnother biggie is that SPSS squeezes its data into a spreadsheety table structure. R has a single language for 'scripting', but don't think of it like that, R is really a programming language with great data manipulation, statistics, and graphics functionality built in. The initial workflow for SPSS involves justifying writing a big fat cheque. If you are going to be learning R, this post on the stats exchange website has a bunch of great resources for learning R: If you have to collaborate with others, their comfort level with SPSS or R should play a factor as you don't want to be the only one in your group that can work on or edit a script that you wrote in the future. Others have pointed out some of the big differences in terms of cost and functionality of the programs. I haven't found a good SPSS community to ask questions of when I run into problems. R syntax seems much more logical and follows programming standards more closely AND there is a very active community to rely on should you run into trouble (SO for instance). You mention that you are going to be scripting most of your work, and personally I find SPSS's scripting syntax absolutely horrendous, to the point that I've stopped working with SPSS whenever possible.I haven't found a robust solution for R to accomplish this same task. Labeling of data -> SPSS does a pretty good job with the variable labels and value labels.The equivalent function in R involves learning LaTex or using a odfWeave or Lyx or something of that nature. These can relatively easily be transported to Word Documents or Excel sheets for further analysis / presentation. Output of tables - SPSS has basic tables, general tables, custom tables, etc that are all output to that nifty data viewer or whatever they call it.Some of the biggest differences I have run into include: I work at a company that uses SPSS for the majority of our data analysis, and for a variety of reasons - I have started trying to use R for more and more of my own analysis. SPSS does have scripting which takes it beyond being a mere bus, but the general phylosophy of SPSS steers people towards the GUI rather than the scripts. There are GUIs for R that make it a bit easier to use, but also limit the functionality that can be used that easily. Here is something that I posted to the R-help mailing list a while back, but I think that it gives a good high level overview of the general difference in R and SPSS:
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