Data Carpentry with R for Social Sciences and Humanities

Leiden University

8-9 October 2025

9:00 - 17:00 CEST

Instructors: Bjørn Bartholdy, Ben Companjen, Peter Verhaar

Helpers: Elviss Dvinskis, Sara Shoghi Javan, Narmin Rzayeva

About the workshop

This workshop provides a hands-on introduction to working with (survey) data for analysis and visualisation. We explore the possibilities and limitations of spreadsheet software, special software for cleaning tabular data and use the R programming language to create a reproducible analysis.

General Information

The Carpentries project comprises the Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and Library Carpentry communities of Instructors, Trainers, Maintainers, helpers, and supporters who share a mission to teach foundational computational and data science skills to researchers.

Data Carpentry develops and teaches workshops on the fundamental data skills needed to conduct research. Its target audience is researchers who have little to no prior computational experience, and its lessons are domain specific, building on learners' existing knowledge to enable them to quickly apply skills learned to their own research. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.

For more information on what we teach and why, please see our paper "Good Enough Practices for Scientific Computing".

Who: The course is aimed at graduate students and other researchers. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.

This workshop is open to researchers and staff of Leiden University, TU Delft and Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Where: Leiden. Get directions with OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.

When: 8-9 October 2025; 9:00 - 17:00 CEST Add to your Google Calendar.

Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed and data downloaded (listed below).

Accessibility: We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody. The workshop organizers have checked that:

We are dedicated to providing a positive and accessible learning environment for all. We do not require participants to provide documentation of disabilities or disclose any unnecessary personal information. However, we do want to help create an inclusive, accessible experience for all participants. We encourage you to share any information that would be helpful to make your Carpentries experience accessible. To request an accommodation for this workshop, please fill out the accommodation request form. If you have questions or need assistance with the accommodation form please email us.

Glosario is a multilingual glossary for computing and data science terms. The glossary helps learners attend workshops and use our lessons to make sense of computational and programming jargon written in English by offering it in their native language. Translating data science terms also provides a teaching tool for Carpentries Instructors to reduce barriers for their learners.

Workshop Recordings: Carpentries workshops are designed to be interactive rather than lecture-based, with lessons that build upon one another. To foster a positive learning environment, we strongly recommend that participants join in real time. As a result, this workshop will not be recorded.

Contact: Please email cds@library.leidenuniv.nl for more information.


Code of Conduct

Everyone who participates in Carpentries activities is required to conform to the Code of Conduct. This document also outlines how to report an incident if needed.


Surveys

Please be sure to complete these surveys before and after the workshop.

Pre-workshop Survey

Post-workshop Survey


Schedule

Day 1

Before starting Pre-workshop survey
9:00 Welcome
9:15 Introduction to R
10:00 Break
10:15 Introduction to R
11:15 Break
11:30 Data Organization in Spreadsheets
12:30 Lunch
13:30 Data Cleaning with OpenRefine
14:45 Break
15:00 Starting with Data
16:00 Break
16:15 Starting with Data
16:50 Q&A and Feedback
17:00 END

Day 2

9:00 Welcome
9:10 Starting with Data (short recap)
9:40 Data Wrangling
10:30 Break
10:45 Data Wrangling
11:45 Lunch
12:45 Getting started with Quarto
13:45 Break
14:00 Data Visualization
15:00 Break
15:15 Data Visualization
16:40 Post-workshop survey and wrap-up
17:00 END

Setup

To participate in this Data Carpentry workshop, you will need access to a spreadsheet application, OpenRefine and RStudio with R. The setup instructions for these applications can be found at the workshop overview site. In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.

You also need to download the data needed for the workshop. Make sure to unzip the file to a location that you can find again.

We maintain a list of common issues that occur during installation as a reference for instructors that may be useful on the Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.