R scripts that reproduce every computed number, table, and figure in the book Quantitative Research Methods: A Practical Guide with R and SPSS (Dr George Owusu, Department of Geography and Resource Development, University of Ghana).
Each reproduce_chapterNN.R regenerates the results for one chapter. afro_prep.R is a shared
helper that loads and cleans the Afrobarometer data identically for every chapter that uses it.
No data is included in this repository. The datasets are freely available from their original sources (see Getting the data below). This keeps the repository light and respects the data providers' terms.
| Script | Chapter | Data |
|---|---|---|
afro_prep.R |
shared loader/cleaner (sourced by the Afrobarometer scripts) | Afrobarometer |
reproduce_chapter02.R |
2 — Variables, Measurement, Visualization | Afrobarometer |
reproduce_chapter06.R |
6 — Descriptives, Correlation, Simple Regression | Afrobarometer |
reproduce_chapter07.R |
7 — Hypothesis Testing | Afrobarometer |
reproduce_chapter08.R |
8 — Composite Scoring & Chi-square | Afrobarometer |
reproduce_chapter09.R |
9 — Multiple / Logistic / Multinomial Regression | Gapminder |
reproduce_chapter10.R |
10 — ANOVA | Afrobarometer |
reproduce_chapter11.R |
11 — Factor Analysis | Afrobarometer |
reproduce_chapter12.R |
12 — Non-Parametric Tests | Afrobarometer |
reproduce_chapter13.R |
13 — The Role of AI in Quantitative Research Methods | Afrobarometer |
Chapters 1, 3, 4, and 5 are conceptual and involve no computation, so they have no script.
The practicals/ folder holds practice exercises for every chapter — concept checks and hands-on data tasks (with different variables from the book's worked examples). See practicals/README.md. Model answers are provided to instructors separately.
- R 4.x
- R packages:
haven,psych,GPArotation,car,nnet,effectsize,FSA,dunn.test,sf,tmap,gapminder. Install with:
install.packages(c("haven","psych","GPArotation","car","nnet","effectsize",
"FSA","dunn.test","sf","tmap","gapminder","geodata"))Afrobarometer Round 9, Ghana (2023) — used by most chapters. Free, no registration:
download the SPSS .sav file from
https://www.afrobarometer.org/survey-resource/ghana-round-9-data-2023/
(direct file: afrobarometer_release-dataset_gha_r9_en_2023-04-01.sav). Save it somewhere on
your machine; you will point the scripts at it (see Running the scripts).
Gapminder — used by Chapter 9 only. No download needed; it ships with the gapminder R package.
Ghana regional boundaries (map in Chapter 2) — no manual download needed. reproduce_chapter02.R fetches Ghana's level-1 boundaries (GADM 4.1) automatically at runtime via the geodata package and caches them under a gis/ sub-folder. (If you already have a local gis/gadm41_GHA_1.json, the script uses that instead.)
The Afrobarometer scripts expect a variable AFRO_SAV giving the path to your .sav file. Set it
before running (edit the path to wherever you saved the file):
AFRO_SAV <- "C:/path/to/afrobarometer_release-dataset_gha_r9_en_2023-04-01.sav"
source("reproduce_chapter08.R") # or any other chapterreproduce_chapter09.R (Gapminder) needs no data file — just run it:
source("reproduce_chapter09.R")Each script prints its results to the console and writes any figures to a figures/ sub-folder.
Every result in the book was produced by running these scripts against the real data — nothing was invented. Running a script yourself should reproduce the corresponding numbers in the book exactly.
Scripts © 2026 George Owusu. The Afrobarometer and Gapminder datasets remain the property of their respective providers and are used under their own terms.