Format R Output to Look Like SPSS.

r2spss: Format R Output to Look Like SPSS

Create plots and LaTeX tables that look like SPSS output for use in teaching materials. Rather than copying-and-pasting SPSS output into documents, R code that mocks up SPSS output can be integrated directly into dynamic LaTeX documents with tools such as knitr. Functionality includes statistical techniques that are typically covered in introductory statistics classes: descriptive statistics, common hypothesis tests, ANOVA, and linear regression, as well as box plots, histograms, scatter plots, and line plots (including profile plots).

Installation

Package r2spss is on CRAN (The Comprehensive R Archive Network), hence the latest release can be easily installed from the R command line via

install.packages("r2spss")

Building from source

To install the latest (possibly unstable) development version from GitHub, you can pull this repository and install it from the R command line via

install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("aalfons/r2spss")

If you already have package devtools installed, you can skip the first line.

LaTeX requirements

LaTeX tables created with package r2spss build upon several LaTeX packages. A LaTeX style file that includes all requirements can be produced with function r2spss.sty(). By default, it prints the content of the style file on the R console, but its only argument path can be used to specify the path to a folder in which to put the file r2spss.sty. For instance, the following command can be used to put the style file in the current working directory.

r2spss.sty(path = ".")

After putting the style file in the folder that contains your LaTeX document, the following command should be included in the preamble of your LaTeX document, i.e., somewhere in between \documentclass{} and \begin{document}.

\usepackage{r2spss}

Dynamic documents and knitr options

Package r2spss is the most useful when writing dynamic LaTeX documents with tools such as the R package knitr. When creating LaTeX tables in R code chunks with knitr, the output of the chunk should be written directly into the output document by setting the chunk option results='asis'. For more information on knitr chunk options, in particular various options for figures, please consult the knitr documentation.

Mimicking different SPSS versions

Package r2spss can create output that mimics the look of current SPSS versions, as well as the look of older versions. The relevant functions contain the argument version for specifying which type of output to create. Possible values are "modern" to mimic recent versions and "legacy" to mimic older versions. LaTeX tables that mimic the look of recent SPSS version thereby build upon the LaTeX package nicematrix and its NiceTabular environment, which is preferred for its seamless display of background colors in the table.

However, r2spss requires nicematrix version 6.5 (2022-01-23) or later. It is also important to note that tables using the NiceTabular environment may require several LaTeX compilations to be displayed correctly.

Within a dynamic LaTeX document or any other R session, it can be useful to set a global preference for which SPSS version to mimic. This can be done with the accessor function r2spss_options$set(). For instance, a default to mimic older SPSS versions can be set with:

r2spss_options$set(version = "legacy")

Package vignette

Various examples for using r2spss are given in the package vignette, which can be accessed from the R console with

vignette("r2spss-intro")

Community guidelines

Report issues and request features

If you experience any bugs or issues or if you have any suggestions for additional features, please submit an issue via the Issues tab of this repository. Please have a look at existing issues first to see if your problem or feature request has already been discussed.

Contribute to the package

If you want to contribute to the package, you can fork this repository and create a pull request after implementing the desired functionality.

Ask for help

If you need help using the package, or if you are interested in collaborations related to this project, please get in touch with the package maintainer.