SPSS and R data analysis in Delhi

How much statistics do Delhi PhD coursework and entrance syllabi cover?

More than many scholars remember by the time they reach the analysis chapter. Each university sets it out in its ordinance.

• University of Delhi. Clause E.1 of the 2026 Ordinance VI sets coursework at 12 to 16 credits. That includes a four-credit research methodology course and the two-credit Research and Publication Ethics course. You need 55% to continue. Your DRC and BRS approve what the course covers, so ask your department for its own syllabus.
• JNU. For scholars admitted since 2022–23, research methodology gets at least four credits. The rule is clause 7.4 of Ordinance 13 (B), which you’ll find in the Academic Ordinances. The clause says the course could cover “quantitative methods, computer applications, research ethics and review of published research in the relevant field”. It could also include training and field work.
• Jamia Millia Islamia. Clause 4(a) of Ordinance 9 (IX) sets a minimum of 16 credits. It starts with a four-credit Research Methodology course that may include quantitative and qualitative methods and computer applications. There’s also a two-credit annotated bibliography or term paper that reviews papers in your area. Each course is 40% internal assessment and 60% end-semester exam. Departments run their own software training too. In December 2023 the Department of Economics held a one-day SPSS workshop for research scholars. It covered non-parametric tests, correlation and regression.
• GGSIPU. Research methodology is half of the entrance test. Look at the 2026–27 PhD brochure for the University School of Biotechnology. It lists one-way and two-way ANOVA with Duncan’s, Tukey’s and Newman-Keuls post hoc tests. It lists the Mann-Whitney U and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests, and factor, cluster and discriminant analysis. Split-plot and factorial designs are there too. The syllabus for the University School of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences covers longitudinal data analysis with repeated measures and mixed-effect models. It ends with “Basics of SPSS”.
• IIT Delhi. Beyond each department’s course credits, every PhD student must pass a course on “Research Communication and Professional Ethics”.

Examiners assume you know what these courses taught. Say your coursework covered ANOVA and post hoc tests. A thesis that then runs a string of t-tests on the same groups invites a hard question. Our coursework and RPE guide explains the national rules. And our guide to choosing a statistical test maps designs to tests.

Which Delhi ethics committee clears your study, and how long does it take?

If your data come from people, an ethics committee judges the analysis plan before anyone sees a results table. Delhi’s committees differ in how often they meet and in what they ask for.

A few details are worth planning around.

• DU. The committee’s instructions, uploaded in 2023, ask for three signed copies sent on by your Head, with a PDF by email. Members get proposals at least ten days before a meeting. And the committee meets about twice a year, so a missed cycle can cost months. Clause E.14 of Ordinance VI makes clearance a condition of starting research.
• JNU. The IERB was set up in 2008 under ICMR guidelines. Internal members screen each proposal before it reaches external members. The certificate is issued once the committee is satisfied the study does no harm to participants.
• AIIMS New Delhi. The committee’s thesis protocol format asks for six copies and two PDFs on a CD. It wants an undertaking that work has not started. It also wants a signed undertaking that scales and questionnaires are not copyrighted, or that permission has been obtained. The form asks for the number of patients, inclusion and exclusion criteria, controls and study design. It advises against clinical or drug trials as PhD topics. And it says plainly that no retrospective clearance is given. Our guide to health-science PhDs in Delhi covers AIIMS admission.
• IIT Delhi. The Institute Ethics Committee follows the ICMR’s 2017 guidelines. Every researcher must complete an NPTEL course on ethics in human research. Its forms page has separate annexures for exemption, expedited review, six-monthly progress reports and social and behavioural studies.

Our ethics approval guide explains the national rules. Every one of these committees will ask you to justify your sample size, and sample size calculation helps with that number.

Why does a Hindi or bilingual questionnaire need extra care in a Delhi analysis?

Many Delhi studies collect data in Hindi, and the ethics forms say so. AIIMS asks you to certify that the Hindi information sheet and consent form are true translations of the English ones. IIT Delhi has a separate vetting form for any material not in English. DU’s committee wants consent forms in the local language. None of these rules is about statistics. But they shape what your analysis must show.

• Reliability belongs to the version you used. A scale’s published Cronbach’s alpha was measured on the original English wording. So if your respondents answered in Hindi, report the reliability you got on the Hindi version. If the scale is long, check the factor structure again too. Our reliability and validity guide explains how.
• Record the language of each response. Did some people answer in English and others in Hindi? Keep that as a variable. You can then check that the two groups don’t differ just because of the wording. An examiner may well ask.
• Permission before translation. AIIMS’s undertaking on copyrighted scales applies to a translation too. Get permission before you translate, and keep the emails for your appendix.

Social-science scholars at JNU, DU and Jamia meet the same issue in surveys of households or students. Our guide to social-science PhDs in Delhi touches on it. Our questionnaire design guide covers translation and pilot testing.

What do Delhi examiners and declarations hold you to about your data and results?

The final checks on your analysis are written into Delhi’s ordinances and declarations. Several go further than a similarity report.

• JNU’s examiners may not recommend a viva unless the thesis adds new knowledge and “the methodology adopted by the candidate is sound” (clause 13.3 of the 2022 Ordinance). A test that doesn’t fit the design is a method question. It isn’t a typing error.
• IIT Delhi’s declaration is printed with the library’s thesis submission guidelines. It puts all the thesis data on your shoulders. You state that every dataset was gathered with permission and that the ethics approvals it needs are attached. You also state that any AI help is disclosed, and that the analysis, interpretations and conclusions are all yours.
• GGSIPU’s Academic Research and Ethics Regulations, 2020 ask you to record data clearly, with the steps you followed. You must store all data, raw data included, safely, so it can be produced later. Falsifying or making up data, graphs, images or tables is graded on the same Level 1 to 3 scale as plagiarism.
• DU’s clause E.14 asks scholars to keep faith with their data, results and tools. It lists fabrication, falsification and AI-generated content as misconduct that can lead to cancellation.

So what does this mean for your analysis? Three things. Keep the raw file untouched and do all recoding in syntax or script. Log every decision about outliers and missing values. And be able to rerun any table when asked. That’s how we hand over the work, and it’s why we never change data to reach significance. Our ethics policy sets out where our help stops.

Working with us from Delhi

Our first video call covers your objectives, the tool you used to collect data, and how far the ethics approval has got. Still waiting on approval? We can help you write the analysis plan and the sample-size case for the application. That matters in Delhi. DU’s committee meets only about twice a year, and AIIMS takes proposals by the 15th of the month. The analysis itself starts only once you have collected data under that approval.

You then send the data file with your codebook or questionnaire. Take out names and other direct identifiers first. We screen the data with you and agree the tests against your objectives. Then we run them in the software your supervisor prefers. Was your questionnaire in Hindi, or in both languages? Then we work out reliability on the version your respondents really answered, and keep the language as a variable.

You get the syntax or scripts behind every table, a log of each recoding decision, and a walk-through session. With those, you can answer a JNU examiner’s question on method, or rerun a table for your GGSIPU supervisor. You write the reading of the results in your chapter, and we comment on it.