Posted 4 April 2024. Updated 5 April 2024.
Most researchers will have a set preference for tools they use in their work. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t reach for one program over the other, only using their least favourite when it’s required by their school or department. I’m in a unique position where, as someone entering the social sciences without a psychology background specifically, I’m using tools that aren’t super familiar to me. For example, in ecology, conservation and biodiversity, we generally use R, a stats program used to analyse data and make inferences and predictions. In social sciences, we use SPSS instead (with similar functionalities). I’ve also been experimenting with different writing mediums. So, here’s my toolkit as of now, possibly updated as I go.
Scrivener: I’m still on the fence about Scrivener. Not because I don’t like the program itself, but it’s not particularly useful for connecting devices especially if you’re Apple/OS/iOS based. I haven’t found that the iCloud capability works all that well and I generally have to copy and paste everything into a Word document if I want to send it to someone else, like my supervisor. Which is a shame because Scrivener is a beautiful writing program with some incredible functions. For example you can create tabs in your sidebar including chapters (research chapters, or book chapters if you’re a novelist) for each section or paper of your research and thesis respectively. You can also collate your research links into it’s own folder. As I’m writing this I realise that I do actually love Scrivener – if only it were more cross-device compatible. All your work (chapters, files, notes) all appears in the left side sidebar as a drop hierarchical menu giving you full writing functionality on the main screen, and no distractions on the right. It’s my preferred layout for writing. What I don’t like about Microsoft Word is made up for in Scrivener (who likes to navigate around to open other documents? Not me.) but there are some issues with multi-device responsiveness.
Microsoft Word: The classic writing tool preferred by almost everyone I know. I suspect Word is preferred because most people use it/have it and it’s easily installed on all kinds of computers, from Windows to Mac iOS. I like it but I think it can be difficult to format in MS Word. I’m definitely more Type A than Type B, and I like things really perfect and organised, I’m not really someone who wants to spend a lot of time fiddling with layouts on a writing document. And MS Word is classically difficult for formatting. But, alas, I know that almost all research journals and especially my department want work/research and final products submitted as a PDF from MS Word, so it’s a necessary tool for me. (I do like it… it could just be better).
SPSS: or Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and now Statistical Product and Service Solutions is the preferred stats package for social sciences and is what is used by my department, or at least by the social scientists (and me, the newly layered wildlife and social scientist). In the past I’ve used R (or The R Project for Statistical Computing). Making the switch to SPSS has been interesting. It has a much nicer (less terrifying) interface than R, but having come from using R to now using SPSS, there are challenging differences. I personally have never found any stats computing programs to be all that intuitive so if you’re using these programs I either recommend buying a resource or hiring a tutor, or working with someone in your school or department to really get the motions right. Of course, if you’re an undergraduate in science or psychology (and probably in any math fields) you’ll likely use R or SPSS during your course. You’ll definitely use it for post-graduate work, MPhil, PhD and fellowship work. I learned to use R in my undergraduate because R is the preferred tool for ecology and conservation science. Sadly for me we didn’t use SPSS so I’m self-paced teaching myself with their tutorials. So far, I like it!
