SPSS and R data analysis in Mumbai

What do the University of Mumbai’s regulations expect of your methods and data?

More than most scholars read. The Regulations for Ph.D. in force since January 2026 touch the analysis at five points:

• Coursework. R.PhD.13(6) gives at least four credits to research methodology. The areas it may cover include quantitative methods, qualitative methods, appropriate statistical methods, computer applications and research ethics. Up to 40% of coursework credits may come from SWAYAM courses if your RAC agrees. That’s one way to get a real stats course if your centre doesn’t teach one.
• The RAC. Its duties under R.PhD.10(3) include guiding you to develop the study design and methodology. You present to it every six months, and there’s a mid-term assessment after two years. So your plan for the analysis will be probed long before the viva.
• Clearances and records. R.PhD.15(2) asks for ethical clearance wherever needed. R.PhD.15(6) tells you to keep all records, samples and analysis reports. They become the property of the research centre and may be inspected.
• Reproducibility. The code of conduct in R.PhD.30 asks for validity, reproducibility, accuracy and objectivity in collecting, interpreting and reporting data. It also wants data kept in a durable, referenced and accessible form.
• Misconduct. R.PhD.30 defines fabrication as reporting studies or results that never happened. Falsification is presenting something materially false, and that includes omitting a fact. Honest errors and differences of interpretation are expressly not misconduct.

In practice, the syntax file and a log of every recode are not extras. You need both. Say your RAC or an examiner asks how a table was produced. You should be able to rerun it in front of them. And the thesis itself, R.PhD.18(1) says, must show a thorough grasp of the methods adopted and findings that are appropriately interpreted.

What will the TISS Institutional Review Board ask about your sample and analysis?

The TISS IRB reviews every research proposal involving human participants from faculty and doctoral scholars. Its members include experts in research methodology and demography, as well as social work, law and public health. Its application procedures of January 2026 fix the order of events. You may apply only after presenting and defending your proposal, but before collecting any data. The IRB won’t consider a project whose data collection has begun. Your guide’s cover letter must confirm that you have taken in the feedback from your Doctoral Advisory Committee. The data collection tools go in English and in every language you’ll use in the field. Participant information sheets must be in everyday language. The Research Ethics Framework you fill in has several questions that are really about statistics:

Once the data are in, the TISS Manual of Style sets how survey tables look. It tells a frequency table apart from a cross table. The frequency table has a serial number, category, frequency and percentage, with a column total. The cross table lists the independent variable’s categories down the left-hand column and the dependent variable’s across the top. It gives row and column totals. Row percentages go in brackets beside each frequency, with column percentages beneath. The manual notes that only row-wise comparison yields statistically permissible results. Tables are numbered by chapter, such as Table 4.1, and never called “the table below”. SPSS crosstab output doesn’t follow that layout by default, so it has to be rebuilt.

The city’s social-science programmes are compared in our guide to social-science PhDs in Mumbai.

How do the IIPS and KEM Hospital ethics committees treat survey and patient data?

IIPS, Deonar. The International Institute for Population Sciences implemented new IRB standard operating procedures in September 2026. Look under the heading on data analysis. A quantitative proposal must describe its statistical methods and justify the sample size, the power of the study and the significance level. The SOP sorts proposals into three routes, with rough timings from a complete application:

• Exempt (about two weeks): for example, publicly available or fully anonymised secondary data where nobody can be re-identified, or published aggregate demographic indicators.
• Expedited (about six weeks): minimal-risk studies, which can include secondary analysis of identifiable data already collected.
• Full committee (about ten to twelve weeks): everything else, with applications due six weeks before the meeting.

Consent forms go in English and the local language. If your thesis rests on a national survey dataset, the exempt route may apply. But the IRB, not you, decides which route a proposal takes. The IRB page gave 23 September 2026 as the last date for the full board meeting of 23 October 2026. Check the next cycle’s dates there.

Seth G.S. Medical College and KEM Hospital, Parel. The IEC’s guidelines for investigators (version 5.1) list PhD dissertation projects among the studies that need its approval before they start. Proposals are submitted through the e-EC software, and those in by the 20th of a month usually reach the next month’s meeting. There are no meetings in May and November. For academic, non-sponsored projects the processing fee stated there is ₹1,500. The protocol also needs an ethics section covering confidentiality, consent and the policy on publishing the data. Build the sample size into the protocol before you submit it. If you change it after approval, you go back to the committee.

Our ethics approval guide explains the review categories in general. Our sample size guide shows how to justify the number you ask for.

What do IIT Bombay, ICT and SNDT add for engineering, science and survey theses?

IIT Bombay. The institute’s Institutional Review Board was set up in May 2020. It covers research involving social and behavioural studies with human subjects. So a user survey in a design or management thesis comes under it, and so does an interview study in the humanities. Proposals go through the Drona research portal. Its external members come from IIM Mumbai and TISS.

ICT. The 2026-27 admission manual sets PhD coursework at 18 credits. That includes a compulsory 4-credit research methodology course and a 2-credit course in research and publication ethics, all to be finished before the synopsis. The 2015 rules ask you to keep full, careful lab records and to show them at the open defence if needed. Their thesis annexure also sets how results look. Tables are numbered by chapter, with the heading above and each parameter’s unit in its own column. Figures are drawn preferably by you, with the independent variable on the horizontal axis. Units go beside every variable name, and captions go below. Design-of-experiments and regression output from Minitab, Design-Expert or R needs reformatting to meet that.

SNDT Women’s University. The written entrance test in the 2022 regulations gives half its marks to research methodology. Research methodology is also a four-credit coursework paper. The research proposal format lists “framework and methods proposed” and “expected outputs” including datasets. SNDT’s thesis guidelines then want the design-of-study chapter to say which statistical tests were run and how. Is your questionnaire in Marathi, Gujarati or Hindi? Then report the reliability of the version respondents actually answered. Our reliability and validity guide explains how.

Management scholars at NMIMS, JBIMS or SJMSOM usually meet structural equation models. Our management PhD guide for Mumbai covers those programmes, and choosing a statistical test covers the rest.

Working with us from Mumbai

A video call comes first. It covers your research questions, the design and the state of the data. The data file and codebook or questionnaire then reach us by email. The order of work turns on how far your committee has got with you:

• Before an ethics application. This might be a TISS IRB framework, an IIPS proposal or a KEM protocol. We work with you on the case for your sample size. We also help word the analysis plan so a mixed committee can follow it. Then the tests you promise will be ones your design can actually deliver. Translating tools and consent forms into Marathi or Hindi stays with you.
• Before an RAC presentation. For University of Mumbai scholars, we set out the analysis so you can explain it at the six-monthly review. You also get the syntax and recode log your centre may ask to see under R.PhD.15(6).
• Writing up. We rebuild SPSS output into the table layout your institution uses: TISS cross tables, ICT’s units-in-column tables, or your centre’s own format.

At the end, a video session walks through your own output, so you can defend every figure at the viva. Has the analysis moved away from what your IRB or IEC approved? Then we say so, and you take it back to them before the thesis. Our ethics policy explains the line we don’t cross.