Statistical methodology
Find out about statistics education at Sussex.
Teaching cutting-edge topics
In our methods modules, students are taught statistics and psychological research methods within the framework of Open Science and reproducibility. We teach cutting-edge topics rarely taught elsewhere (e.g. robust methods, and Bayesian methods) and we’re one of only a handful of institutions in the UK that teach the open source statistics packages R and RStudio.
Learning statistics
Our Psychological Methods teaching team, led by internationally known textbook author and educator Prof Andy Field, is at the cutting edge of research methods and statistics education.
- Books
Field, A. P. (2022). An Adventure in Statistics: The Reality Enigma (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications.
Field, A. P. (2017). Discovering Statistics Using IBM SPSS Statistics (5th ed.). SAGE Publications.
Field, A. P. (2012). Discovering Statistics Using R. SAGE Publications.
- Interactive Tutorials
Milan Valášek’s Interactive Visualisations of Statistics Concepts.
Milan Valášek’s Visual Explainer of Principle Components Analysis. - Video Tutorials
Andy Field’s SPSS Tutorials.
- Talks
Learning Bayesian statistics
Our team also includes Prof Zoltan Dienes, an internationally known expert in Bayesian statistics. Learn more about how to conduct Bayesian analysis using the resources below.
- Books
Dienes, Z. (2008). Understanding Psychology as a Science: An Introduction to Scientific and Statistical Inference. Bloomsbury Publishing.
- Papers
Dienes, Z. (2021). How to use and report Bayesian hypothesis tests. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practise, 8(1), 9–26. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/bua5n
Dienes, Z. (2021). Obtaining evidence for no effect. Collbra: Psychology, 7(1), Article 28202. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.28202
Dienes, Z. (2019). How do I know what my theory predicts? Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 2(4), 364–377. https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245919876960
Dienes, Z., & Mclatchie, N. (2018). Four reasons to prefer Bayesian analyses over significance testing. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25(1), 207–218. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-017-1266-z
Dienes, Z. (2014). Using Bayes to get the most out of non-significant results. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00781
Dienes, Z. (2011). Bayesian versus orthodox statistics: Which side are you on? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(3), 274–290. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691611406920
- Video Tutorials
Zoltan Dienes' Basic Introduction to Bayes Factors.
Zoltan Dienes' Workshop on Bayes Factors. - Online Courses
Lincoln Colling’s Advanced Statistical Methods: Bayesian Statistics.
- Calculators
Zoltan Dienes has released an online Bayes factor calculator for performing Bayesian analyses. It is also possible to perform these calculations with Lincoln Colling’s Bayesplay R package and web-app and in JASP.
Learning R
As well as running undergraduate and postgraduate taught modules in statistics, our team run workshops for researchers on Open Science, R and RStudio, and statistical practice. Our major goal for 2019-2022 was to train the entire research community within the School of Psychology to be proficient in R and RStudio. In 2017, we reviewed the postgraduate curriculum so that all methods teaching used R, and the undergraduate curriculum underwent a similar review in 2018 with the new curriculum first rolled out in 2019.
- Interactive tutorials
- Andy Field’s Getting Started with R.
- Andy Field’s Learning R Video Playlist.
- Andy Field's discovr Package of Interactive Tutorials for Learning R.
- Andy Field's adventr Package of Interactive Tutorials for Learning R.
- Milan Valášek & Jennifer Mankin’s The Great Escape (Game to Learn Data Processing and Analysis in R).
- Danielle Evans' FundRmentals School of Psychology Faculty R Course.
- Milan Valášek & Jennifer Mankin’s Interactive Visualisation for Undergraduate Analysing Data Course.