Research should be open.

Commercial packages are not open.

R and Python are open.

It depends on the type of the research data and research design as well.

there are lots of R package available for the data analysis such as csem, seminr and plspm. All package are free and it require minor R knowledge.

Jochen Wilhelm, Long She and Waqas Ali,

Thank you for answering.

It depends on research and context (e.g., in epidemiological studies, SPSS or STATA or R is enough).

Have a look at jamovi. It's free, intuitive and based on R. Excellent features such as when you change a piece of data, everything that depends on the variable – other variables, graphs, results – everything updates.

jamovi's ever-expanding library of modules can cope with a lot of quite sophisticated models.

I recommend R for you

I say R and SPSS

R and SAS are best.

R Programming in RStudio which is open source

None is the best . it all depends on the type of research and then the type of data to be analyzed

Ronán Michael Conroy, Obi Chibuzor, Proloy Barua, Abdisa Jura Hunduma, Brian Mumba and Seyi Ajao,

Thank you for your valuable answers.

for medical studies I would like to suggest MedCalc software, otherwise SPPS is the common software

Ayad Palani,

Thank you for replying.

The purpose of conducting a statistical analysis is basically to give meaning to seemingly meaningless numbers. Regardless of whatever the statistical method used, the researcher has to have a clear idea of the basic concepts of the approach they are using. Inappropriate use of statistics will lead to faulty conclusions, errors and it will undermine the significance of the research. Therefore whether it is SPSS, MatLab, Minitab, or R software, the application depends on the context of the research.

Nirmali Samarakoon thank you for replying.

Dear Samarakoon,

SPSS is the common software, but for medical statistics I would like to suggest MedCalc.

Best

There are many packages in R. But its depends on the aim of your research.

R and Python are best

R software

All are best, but You can select the software based on the nature of your data and the analysis you want to do.

i am only familiar with SPSS

Stata

All are best. Based on your nature of data and your objective you can use one of them!

Your preference, the characteristics of the data as well as it complexity will determine the choice of software for the analysis. However, big data demands more advanced and sophisticated software like SAS, R, Python etc.