SPSS and R data analysis in Kolkata

Where does statistics appear in Kolkata’s PhD coursework?

Every Kolkata PhD now begins with research methodology. But the amount of statistics in it ranges from a named SPSS module to nothing specified at all.

The most detailed syllabus we found is the University of Calcutta Department of Education’s 2026 coursework, framed under the 2025 Regulations. Its Part A carries 8 credits. It starts with sampling and sample size, questionnaires, scales and pilot studies. Then it moves through coding and tabulation and “Introduction to Statistical Software: SPSS”. After that come central tendency, dispersion, measures of association, regression and correlation, and hypothesis tests for proportions and means. A separate unit on computer applications has “Hand on to SPSS” beside Excel and LaTeX. The WBUHS syllabus in its 2023 regulations covers almost the same ground.

Notice where these syllabi stop. Neither reaches factor analysis, logistic regression, repeated measures, mixed models or structural equation modelling. Yet many Kolkata theses in education, management, public health and psychology use them. If your chapter does, you’ll be defending methods your coursework never examined. That is exactly what the viva probes. MAKAUT scholars have a choice here. The May 2026 notice lets the supervisor pick the two electives from NPTEL or Coursera. So one of them can be the analysis method your thesis needs. The national rules are in our coursework and RPE guide.

Which Kolkata committees scrutinise a study’s design, and what have they asked for?

If people or animals are involved, a committee sees your design first. The analysis you run later has to match what it cleared.

WBUHS. In the 2023 regulations, ethics committee clearance appears in the list of essential requisites for registration “for all candidates”. The Research Advisory Committee and the Institutional Ethics Committee recommend the detailed research proposal. Then the university’s PhD committee must approve it within the first year, or the registration is cancelled. That committee includes experts in research methodology, statistics and ethics.

Jadavpur University. Its Institutional Ethics Committee was reconstituted under ICMR guidelines by an Executive Council resolution of 25 May 2018. A University of Calcutta psychology professor chairs it, and the members include a CSIR-IICB scientist, a legal adviser and a lay member. The minutes the university has published show it reading designs, not just consent forms. Take August 2021. A Food Technology and Biochemical Engineering scholar was studying women’s self-help groups. The committee asked for broad objectives to be refined, the independent and dependent variables separated, and possible confounding dealt with. In February 2021 it approved a set of School of Cognitive Science EEG studies, but only once it was told three things. It wanted to know how depression would be confirmed clinically. It was told the General Health Questionnaire and Beck Depression Inventory would rule out other disorders. And the older group would be aged 40 to 65. The same file shows the Department of Pharmaceutical Technology’s animal ethics committee approving fewer animals than some protocols asked for. In one June 2022 case, it was 10 mice against 50 requested, and that fixes your sample before the first experiment.

Calcutta, Presidency and IIEST. Their PhD rulebooks give design to the scholar’s own committee rather than an ethics body. Under regulation 8.2.2, Calcutta’s SRAC helps you develop the study’s design and methods. Jadavpur’s RAC has the same duty, alongside six-monthly progress presentations. Ask your supervisor which ethics committee applies before you print a questionnaire. Our sample size guide shows the calculation a committee will ask for, and our ethics approval guide covers the application.

What can the Indian Statistical Institute offer a PhD scholar outside statistics?

Less than its name suggests, and it helps to know the limits. ISI was founded by P. C. Mahalanobis and is now on its Baranagar campus. It awards its own PhD in five subjects only: Statistics, Mathematics, Quantitative Economics, Computer Science, and Quality, Reliability and Operations Research. Its 2026–27 prospectus offered 11 Junior Research Fellowship seats in Statistics through its own test, held in Kolkata, Delhi and Bengaluru. Research fellows in its other subjects, in the natural and social sciences alike, must register with another university for the degree.

Inside ISI, the PhD rules need at least five courses from the discipline’s list before registration. The Research Fellows Advisory Committee sets them, and it may waive a course, but only after you pass a written test on that course. A synopsis, a public seminar and the thesis follow, within five years of registration.

Maybe you’re a scholar elsewhere who wants formal training, not help with one chapter. The prospectus lists a one-year Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Statistics, taught online through Coursera. It is for graduates with mathematics at the 10+2 level. It’s aimed at people who produce or interpret official data without a formal statistics background. It is a paid course with some tuition waivers. The documents we read describe no analysis service for outside scholars, so don’t expect ISI to run your models. Choosing between ISI and the city’s other centres as a social scientist? You’ll find them compared in our social sciences in Kolkata page.

Who reviews your analysis chapter at a Kolkata university, and when?

The committee that approved your design usually sees your results long before the examiners do. So the analysis plan needs to stay consistent from the proposal onwards:

• Calcutta: the SRAC reviews you once a year. It expects supporting documents such as drafted chapters and experiments conducted (10.1). Two unsatisfactory reports in a row lead to a recommendation to cancel. You get the examiners’ full reports at least seven days before the viva (12.4). That is when statistical queries arrive in writing.
• Jadavpur: the RAC assesses progress on a presentation every six months. It sends its report to the Dean through the department’s Ph.D. Research Committee (Regulation 2024, cl. 21).
• WBUHS: half-yearly progress reports go in each January and July. You present to the PhD committee every year, and you keep a logbook. The Pre-PhD seminar puts the draft thesis before experts from the approved panel.
• Presidency: the Departmental Ph.D. Committee hears a synopsis of about 5,000 words at the pre-submission seminar (Regulation 2023, 8.3). Members may put questions in writing.
• IIEST: the coursework on research methodology and documentation comes before registration. Later, the Research Progress Evaluation Committee decides whether you may submit (Ordinances, s. 17 and 20).

At each of these meetings, someone may ask why you chose a test. They may ask if its assumptions held, and how large the effect was. The usual questions are answered in our test selection guide and in our notes on reading regression output.

Working with us from Kolkata

We begin on a video call about your objectives, design and data. A scope in writing follows. Your data files and the questionnaire or codebook reach us by a protected upload link. Strip out respondents’ names and similar identifiers wherever you can. Every output is paired with its script and explained to you on a call, so you understand each number before it enters the chapter. For Kolkata scholars, a few details shape the work:

• Bengali questionnaires. Many Kolkata surveys are fielded in Bengali. We can analyse the coded data if the codebook gives each item and response code in English. The translation of the instrument stays with you and your supervisor.
• WBUHS and Jadavpur ethics review. Fix the sample size and analysis plan before the proposal goes to the ethics committee. Both committees read the design, and the animal committee fixes numbers.
• Calcutta’s annual SRAC review. Bring the script as well as the tables, so the committee sees how each number was produced.
• SPSS or R. Calcutta’s and WBUHS’s syllabi teach SPSS, so most committees there read SPSS output easily. Does your model need R, AMOS or SmartPLS? Then we explain every statistic until you can defend it in your own words.

Keep your ethics clearance reference with the data, because journals and examiners ask for it. Why we never alter data or chase significance is set out in our ethics policy.