SAS (Statistical Analysis Software) – is a statistical analysis platform that offers options to use either the GUI, or to create scripts for more advanced analyses. It is a premium solution that is widely used in business, healthcare, and human behavior research alike. It’s possible to carry out advanced analyses and produce publication-worthy graphs and charts, although the coding can also be a difficult adjustment for those not used to this research.
GraphPad Prism – is a premium software primarily used within statistics related to biology, but offers a range of capabilities that can be used across various fields. Similar to SPSS, scripting options are available to automate analyses, or carry out more complex statistical calculations, but the majority of the work can be completed through the GUI.
Minitab – offers a range of both basic and fairly advanced statistical tools for data analysis. Similar to GraphPad Prism, commands can be executed through both the GUI and scripted commands, making it accessible to novices as well as users looking to carry out more complex analyses.
SPSS – used within human behavior research. SPSS offers the ability to easily compile descriptive statistics, parametric and non-parametric analyses, as well as graphical depictions of results through the graphical user interface (GUI. It also includes the option to create scripts to automate analysis, or to carry out more advanced statistical processing.
R (R Foundation for Statistical Computing) – Free statistical software package that is widely used across both human behavior research and in other fields. Toolboxes (essentially plugins) are available for a great range of applications, which can simplify various aspects of data processing. While R is a very powerful software, it also has a steep learning curve, requiring a certain degree of coding. It does however come with an active community engaged in building and improving R and the associated plugins, which ensures that help is never too far away.
MatLab – is an analytical platform and programming language that is widely used by engineers and scientists. As with R, the learning path is steep, and you will be required to create your own code at some point. A plentiful amount of toolboxes are also available to help answer your research questions (such as EEGLab for analyzing EEG data). While MatLab can be difficult to use for novices, it offers a massive amount of flexibility in terms of what you want to do – as long as you can code it (or at least operate the toolbox you require).
