The RStats Institute, headed by Dr. Todd Daniel, is one of the many useful services available to all students at MSU. RStats stands for Research, Statistical Training, Analysis, and Technical Support. This service can help you with anything stats related from trouble shooting issues with your software to running analyses and more. They also offer help using multiple platforms including SPSS, Microsoft Excel, and R. This can be particularly useful when you are doing a thesis or any sort of project that involves statistical analyses. Not only does the RStats Institute offer one on one appointments, they also offer tutoring and a number of workshops and training classes.

I visited the RStats Institute after I completed data collection on my thesis. I had cleaned my data, ran reliabilities on all my scales and now it was time to run the main analyses for my thesis. The problem was, that I had become so confused by my complicated research design that I could not figure out how to run the necessary analyses. I met with Dr. Daniel and his graduate assistant, Emily Klug in their office at the Park Central Office Building. I was hoping that with their help I would be able to untangle my complicated research design and finally get some answers. I explained the design of my study and gave them both a brief rundown of my variables so they could help me in running analyses. After I explained it to him, Dr. Daniel pulled out a book and found the exact model I needed to use! He then helped me run all my analyses using SPSS. Dr. Daniel was extremely knowledgeable about statistics and even helped me to understand my own study better. The appointment went great, and helped me to figure out something I had spent weeks thinking about. Visiting the RStats Institute really helped to relive a lot of stress I had related to my thesis. I wish I had visited Dr. Daniel and Emily sooner! – Alise Kottman

Alise is in her final semester of the I/O Psychology graduate program.