Visualisation, exploration, and analysis of data is often inaccessible to many due to high up-front costs of learning the necessary coding skills to get started. Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) have often been used to provide inexperienced users with access to these underlying, complex systems without the need for coding. R GUIs are available, but they require some degree of experience with R and a familiarity with statistical concepts. iNZight is a GUI-based tool written in R that enables both students and researchers to interact with and explore data without the need for code.

The Growing Up in New Zealand study is a longitudinal study of child development, so they have some unique datasets that are difficult to analyse using traditional software. We worked with their data access team to extend iNZight’s capabilities to include importing, visualising, and summarising data from social surveys. Additionally, we added new features to read and apply data dictionaries so researchers can access all the available information in one single place.

The Stats NZ Data Lab is the only place social researchers in Aotearoa can get access to data across government organisations through the IDI. However, it has typically been limited to users profient in SQL and another programming language (such as R, Stata, or SAS). iNZight has been increasingly used in non-academic situations, and is an ideal tool for non-programming researchers to use to interact with data and perform standard analyses.

A commentary on a paper about data science at Berkeley, discussing the importance of providing tools to remove barriers and democratise access to data.

The latest release features a major overhaul of iNZight’s handling of survey designs, as well as several other significant user interface changes. Our focus has been on making iNZight a development tool for researchers to use on a wide range of data, specifically from survey designs, in a way that minimises specialist skills (such as understanding the underlying structure of the survey).

Bayesian demography is an important technique for minority communites, and requires special methods to infer the correct results. A set of existing R packages provide a way for researchers to fit hierarchical Bayesian models to estimate birth rates, life expectancy, or forecast important values such as diabetes rates. iNZight is a tool for exploring and analysing data, and provides a way for researchers low on time, money, and/or skill to quickly generate the necessary results with minimal effort.