A Tool for Large-Scale Exploratory Analyses

Conduct numerous exploratory analyses in an instant with a point-and-click interface. With one simple command, this tool launches a Shiny App on the local machine. Drag and drop variables in a data set to categorize them as possible independent, dependent, moderating, or mediating variables. Then run dozens (or hundreds) of analyses instantly to uncover any statistically significant relationships among variables. Any relationship thus uncovered should be tested in follow-up studies. This tool is designed only to facilitate exploratory analyses and should NEVER be used for p-hacking. Many of the functions used in this package are previous versions of functions in the R Packages 'kim' and 'ezr'. Selected References: Chang et al. (2021) < https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=shiny>. Dowle et al. (2021) < https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=data.table>. Kim (2023) < https://jinkim.science/docs/kim.pdf>. Kim (2021) . Kim (2020) < https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ezr>. Simmons et al. (2011) Tingley et al. (2019) < https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=mediation>. Wickham et al. (2020) < https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ggplot2>.

‘exploratory’: an R Package

Exploratory Only: A Tool for Large-Scale Exploratory Analyses

Conduct numerous exploratory analyses in an instant with a point-and-click interface (a Shiny App on the local machine). Select variables in a data set to categorize them as possible independent, dependent, moderating, or mediating variables. Then run dozens (or hundreds) of analyses with one click to uncover any statistically significant relationships among variables.

This tool also allows conducting simple follow-up analyses (e.g., correlation and regression) with the point-and-click interface.

Warning

Any relationship among variables uncovered using this tool should be tested in follow-up studies. This tool is designed only to facilitate exploratory analyses and should NEVER be used for p-hacking (Simmons, Nelson, and Simonsohn, 2011; Ioannidis 2005).

Installation

You can install the released version of the package ‘exploratory’ from CRAN with:

install.packages("exploratory")

You can also install the development version from exploratory on GitHub with:

install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("jinkim3/exploratory")

If you run into errors while using the package, try updating the package to the most recent version available on exploratory on GitHub with:

update_exploratory()

Example

Here is an example of using this package.

library(exploratory)

# update the package 'exploratory'
update_exploratory()

# launch the exploratory analysis tool on a local machine
exploratory()