Supported Research Software
The Harvard Graduate School of Education supports various research software programs.
See below a list of the most commonly used software at HGSE, along with information on the level of access offered.
Basic Information
"ATLAS.ti is a powerful workbench for the qualitative analysis of large bodies of textual, graphical, audio and video data. Sophisticated tools help you to arrange, reassemble, and manage your material in creative, yet systematic ways. ATLAS.ti keeps you focused on the material itself. Whether your field is anthropology, economics, criminology, or medicine: ATLAS.ti will meet your qualitative analysis needs!"
Access at HGSE
HGSE IT offers limited access to Atlas.ti to HGSE affiliates via a shared, group license. If you or your lab require access to Atlas.ti, please contact IT at it_onestop@gse.harvard.edu.
HGSE's group license provides access to a desktop version of the software, as well a cloud-based version, Atlas.ti Cloud, which allows for synchronous online collaboration. Atlas.ti Cloud lacks some advanced analytic feature present in the desktop version, but allows the user to export the project to the desktop version, and has no limit on project size.
ATLAS.ti Desktop vs Web - Compare all features - ATLAS.ti
What resources are available to help learn Atlas.ti?
- Video tutorials from the Atlas.ti developers.
- Individual consultations or group trainings (See consultations for details).
Basic Information
"Fast. Accurate. Easy to use. Stata is a complete, integrated software package that provides all your data science needs—data manipulation, visualization, statistics, and automated reporting."
Access at HGSE
HGSE IT offers access to Stata BE to HGSE students via installation on personal machines (HGSE faculty and staff should contact the IT service center for alternative access). To install Stata on your device:
- Uninstall all previously installed instances of Stata on your machine
- Download the relevant installation files from below (be sure to indicate "Stata BE" if prompted)
- Run the downloaded installation file; keep in mind where you installed the Stata folder
- Download and save the license information file below (you should not have to open the file)
- Move the license information file into the Stata folder (replace existing .lic file if one already exists). The name of the file must be exactly "stata.lic".
- Run Stata
What resources are available to help learn Stata?
Basic Information
"R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. It compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIX platforms, Windows and MacOS."
Note that R is nearly always paired with the program RStudio. "RStudio provides free and open source tools for R and enterprise-ready professional software for data science teams to develop and share their work at scale."
Access at HGSE
R and RStudio are both free. You can find installation files for R, and installation files for RStudio.
What resources are available to help learn R?
Basic Information
"IBM® SPSS® Statistics is a powerful statistical software platform. It delivers a robust set of features that lets your organization extract actionable insights from its data."
Access at HGSE
HGES IT offers limited access to HGSE affiliates. If you or your lab requires access to SPSS, please contact IT at it_onestop@gse.harvard.edu. If you are also affiliated with FAS (e.g. PhD student), you can obtain a copy from the FAS software download page.
SPSS itself offers a free trial version, which expires two weeks upon activation.
What resources are available to help learn SPSS?
Basic Information
"Mplus is a statistical modeling program that provides researchers with a flexible tool to analyze their data. Mplus offers researchers a wide choice of models, estimators, and algorithms in a program that has an easy-to-use interface and graphical displays of data and analysis results. Mplus allows the analysis of both cross-sectional and longitudinal data, single-level and multilevel data, data that come from different populations with either observed or unobserved heterogeneity, and data that contain missing values. Analyses can be carried out for observed variables that are continuous, censored, binary, ordered categorical (ordinal), unordered categorical (nominal), counts, or combinations of these variable types. In addition, Mplus has extensive capabilities for Monte Carlo simulation studies, where data can be generated and analyzed according to any of the models included in the program."
Access at HGSE
HGSE IT offers limited access to Mplus to HGSE affiliates. If you or your lab require access to Mplus, please contact IT at it_onestop@gse.harvard.edu.
Mplus itself offers a demo version, which is identical to the original product but limits the size of the project and the complexity of the analysis.
What resources are available to help learn Mplus?
Basic Information
"EndNote is the industry standard software tool for publishing and managing bibliographies, citations and references on the Windows and Macintosh desktop."
Access at HGSE
HGSE IT offers limited access to EndNote to HGSE affiliates. If you or your lab require access to EndNote, please contact IT at it_onestop@gse.harvard.edu.
EndNote itself offers a free trial version, which expires 30 days after activation.
What resources are available to help learn EndNote?
Basic Information
"State-of-the-art statistical analysis software for making sound decisions."
Note that SAS offers a host of analytic tools and services beyond their statistical research software.
Access at HGSE
SAS offers a university edition for academic, noncommercial use for free.
What resources are available to help learn SAS?
- SAS training materials from the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences
- SAS User’s Forum
- SAS Training and Support Portal
- Youtube videos!
For inquiries about unsupported or other software i.e. NVivo, contact IT_OneStop@gse.harvard.edu.