R you ready? Using the R programme for statistical analysis and graphics

For conducting research, nurses typically use commercial statistical packages. R software is a free, powerful, and flexible alternative, but is less familiar and used less frequently in nursing research. In this paper, we use data from a previous study to demonstrate a few typical steps in exploratory data analysis using R. A step-by-step description of some basic analyses in R is provided here, including examples of specific functions to read and manipulate the data, calculate scores from individual questionnaire items, and prepare a correlation plot and summary table.