R Workbook: Novice to Social Scientist
R Workbook
A hands-on guide to R for content analysis research
Seven chapters take you from building a codebook to publishing a professional research portfolio — with narrated video walkthroughs for every chapter.
What You’ll Learn
This workbook is your companion for the R programming portion of the course (Phases III–V). Each chapter builds on the previous one, following the same dataset through the full research pipeline.
| Chapter | Title | What You’ll Do |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Codebook | Turn qualitative observations into numeric codes |
| 2 | Data Collection | Code your full sample with consistency checks |
| 3 | Meet R | Set up R, RStudio, and your project environment |
| 4 | Data Wrangling | Import, clean, and export your dataset |
| 5 | Describing Data | Build frequency tables and publication-ready charts |
| 6 | Inferencing Data | Run chi-square tests and interpret results |
| 7 | Publishing | Assemble your portfolio as a Quarto Book |
How to Use This Workbook
Every chapter opens with a narrated video walkthrough. Watch it first to get the big picture, then work through the written content at your own pace. The video and text cover the same material — use whichever format helps you learn.
- Watch the video at the top of each chapter
- Follow along in RStudio — the code blocks are designed to run in order
- Use the class dataset (
music_data_raw.csv) for practice - Apply to your own data for the final portfolio
Reference
- R & RStudio Quick Reference — common functions and syntax
- Glossary — key terms defined
Need the Workbook Offline?
The workbook is also available as a standalone Quarto Book. Download it from the Resources page or install coursepackR to access the project files directly in RStudio.