Using statistical software rather than a spreadsheet

(The following information is taken from Dunn (2025) (Sect. 1.5).)

Using spreadsheets for storing and analysing data requires care. Expensive and dangerous errors have been made due to using spreadsheets (AlTarawneh and Thorne 2017). Some challenges with using spreadsheets include that:

  • spreadsheets may change data (e.g., reformatting entries as dates) when not appropriate (Ziemann et al. 2016).
  • spreadsheets may include formulas with errors that are difficult to locate and hence fix (Panko 2016; London and Slagter 2021).
  • spreadsheets do not leave a record of how the data were analysed or prepared. Keeping a record of the analysis, preparation of variables, and other operations with the data is good scientific practice (reproducible research) (Simons and Holmes 2019).
  • spreadsheets often produce poor graphs (Su 2008).

Problems with spreadsheets, as with any software, are often due to human error, but spreadsheets make errors hard to find and hence hard to fix. Spreadsheets are useful for data collection and basic data manipulation, but are not designed for scientific analysis. Be careful using spreadsheets for research and analysis.

Using jamovi

We strongly recommend installing the most recent stable, desktop (not online) version of jamovi.

Using SPSS

All recent versions of SPSS work in similar ways. SPSS is installed in computer labs and available using UniSC Anywhere.

References

AlTarawneh, Ghada, and Simon Thorne. 2017. “A Pilot Study Exploring Spreadsheet Risk in Scientific Research.” arXiv Preprint arXiv:1703.09785.
Dunn, Peter K. 2025. Scientific Research Methods: An Introduction to Quantitative Research and Statistics. Https://peterkdunn.github.io/SRM-Textbook/.
London, R. E., and H. A. Slagter. 2021. “Statement of Retraction: Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation over Left Dorsolateral pFC on the Attentional Blink Depend on Individual Baseline Performance.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 27 (12): 1. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_x_01680.
Panko, Ray. 2016. “What We Don’t Know about Spreadsheet Errors Today: The Facts, Why We Don’t Believe Them, and What We Need to Do.” arXiv Preprint arXiv:1602.02601.
Simons, Janet E., and Daniel T. Holmes. 2019. “Reproducible Research and Reports with R.” Journal of Applied Laboratory Medicine 4 (3): 471–73.
Su, Yu-Sung. 2008. “It’s Easy to Produce Chartjunk Using Microsoft® Excel 2007 but Hard to Make Good Graphs.” Computational Statistics & Data Analysis 52 (10): 4594–601.
Ziemann, Mark, Yotam Eren, and Assam El-Osta. 2016. “Gene Name Errors Are Widespread in the Scientific Literature.” Genome Biology 17 (1): 1–3.
Copyright © Peter K. Dunn, 2026