Introduction to R for Social Sciences – Data Carpentry Workshop

Join us for a 3-day R workshop for social sciences, building skills in data management, exploration & visualisation for beginners.

Introduction

This three-day workshop introduces participants to the R programming language using the Data Carpentry curriculum tailored for the Social Sciences. Designed for researchers and postgraduate students with little or no prior programming experience, the workshop provides foundational skills in data management, exploration, and visualisation within the RStudio environment. The course forms part of the SADiLaR ESCALATOR programme's ongoing efforts to build digital research capacity at South African universities.

Aims of the Workshop

• Introduce participants to R and the RStudio interface
• Build confidence in importing, exploring, and cleaning research data
• Develop skills in data manipulation and visualisation
• Equip participants with reproducible research practices using R
• Provide a foundation for further self-directed learning in R

Workshop Format

Three-day in-person workshop (12-14 May 2026, 09:00–16:00 each day). The format combines instructor-led demonstrations with hands-on coding exercises. Participants follow along on their own laptops in a live-coding style, which allows for immediate practice and troubleshooting. Group size to be confirmed by the host institution.

Topics That Will Be Covered

Day 1: Introduction to R and RStudio (objects, functions, project organisation)

Day 2: Exploring and understanding data; Working with data (data frames, subsetting, filtering with dplyr)

Day 3: Continued work with data; Data visualisation with ggplot2

Optional (time permitting): Introduction to R Markdown for reproducible reporting

Note: The JSON section of the standard curriculum will not be covered.

Outcomes of the Workshop

• By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
• Navigate the RStudio interface and manage R projects
• Import and inspect datasets in R
• Clean, filter, and transform data using dplyr
• Create publication-quality plots using ggplot2
• Apply basic reproducible research practices

Targeted Participants

Postgraduate students (Honours, Masters, and Doctoral level) in the Department of General Linguistics and related departments at Stellenbosch University. The workshop is particularly suited to students who need to work with data as part of their research and have limited or no prior programming experience.

For more information contact:

Bianca Peterson | bianca@fathomdata.dev

Dr Patricia Makaure | zpmakaure@sun.ac.za