The purpose of this tutorial is to provide an R introduction for education data analysts, and to demonstrate useful data exploration commands. You don't need to know any R to do this tutorial. In Part 1, you will see how to use data exploration commands to inspect a student-level dataset. In Part 2, you'll get practice using data exploration commands to answer simple research questions.
To run this tutorial you will need R Studio version 1.0 or higher. Download the R data_exploration.zip file and unzip the contents into a folder on your Desktop. Double-click to open the data_exploration_tutorial.Rmd file using R Studio. As you see each grey section of code in the file viewer pane, click on the green arrow to run the commands. You will see the results in the window below. Use the results to answer the questions in the tutorial. For Part 1 you can check your answers by double-clicking on the part_one_key.html file to open the answer key in your browser.
This tutorial was originally authored by the Strategic Data Project.
OpenSDP is an online, public repository of analytic code, tools, and training intended to foster collaboration among education analysts and researchers in order to accelerate the improvement of our school systems. The community is hosted by the Strategic Data Project, an initiative of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University. We welcome contributions and feedback.