by Alexander L. Williams, M.S., Northwestern University
Clinical trainees juggle a number of responsibilities. When you are working to keep up with your caseload, stay on top of classes, all the while carving out the time you can for your research, there are compelling reasons to spend as little time as possible on anything else! An important decision point for clinical trainees is whether building proficiency with R coding is worth the time and effort. R statistical software is a free to use coding language that allows users to carry out the latest statistical methods used in psychological science. There are excellent reasons to pursue R coding proficiency as part of your graduate training. Using R is consistent with open science principles because R analyses can be reproduced and verified by anyone with a computer and internet connection. Another advantage is that the R language can be used to streamline even the most complex data wrangling steps (see Barrett, 2019 for more benefits of learning R for psychological research).
But once you’ve made the decision to learn R, what is the best strategy to build a strong repertoire of R coding skills? Here, I outline three principles gleaned from my time as an R user these past 4 years.
(1) Make peace with the process of learning R
In my experience, the relationship between time spent using R and proficiency is mostly flat (see Figure 1). In other words, with more time spent using R, you can expect to gain only a small amount of proficiency. Non-procedural learning (e.g., learning statistics) tends to show a similar effort expenditure-skill relationship. In contrast, skills that rely on procedural learning (e.g., riding a bike) tend to develop quickly in the early stages with less gain thereafter. Most computer programs are quick, easy, and painless. R is none of the above! Transitioning to R can be jarring for this reason. It is important to have realistic expectations of the process and the process of building expertise in a coding language may be slow.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Psychological Clinical Science Accreditation System (PCSAS).