Hi,
Thank you all who anwered me.
I think, I mainly thought to understand the difference between SPSS /SAS and
R, but didn't really get the point (what explains the question, wich metods
R can't do). Maybe, because I don't have much experience with programming
(near to none). My background in stats goes also only back to indroductory
classes and an advanced course in multivariate statistics. To this, I'm
working with Hair, Anderson, Tatham & Blacks's "Multivariate Data Analysis"
(5th Ed.) as my ressource, mainly with questionnaire analysis (Reliability
Analysis and Factor Analysis, also MDS, Conjoint etc. plus sometimes
standard MANOVA, Multiplke Regression etc.). So, maybe my stats aren't
sophisticated enough to use R, I'm just a standard user of applied
statistical methods, not an academic researcher or even a statistician. It
was mainly a descision by costs, because R is free software. With the concept, I completely mistook the R concept as a programming
environment more as a kind of advanced SPSS Syntax (because I also would
call it "programming" when using it), which I now know, is completely wrong.
So, I again thank for your help.
Cheers, Frank.
--
You'll find (eventually) that you can do everything you need in R short of accurately getting certain P-values in mixed effect linear models for which SAS does a good job. It's a question of finding the right books, online manuals (main R manuals as well as user contributed ones - see especially "Simple R" to start), understanding specific functions, and perhaps above all, finding examples to work from. For data manipulation in particular (recoding, reshaping data, etc.), R is now superior to all other systems unless the database is truly massive. For statistical reporting R is also way ahead of the pack (e.g., Sweave with LaTeX). SAS and SPSS no longer even complement R in my opinion, except for SAS's scalability in processing massive databases and some features (but not model diagnostics or graphics) of PROC MIXED.
You can think of using R as programming, but for application of many popular analytic methods I prefer to think of it as finding example scripts and modifying them according to your needs.
--
Frank E Harrell Jr Professor and Chair School of Medicine
Department of Biostatistics Vanderbilt University
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