Projects in RStudio

BSTA 511/611

Author

Affiliation

Meike Niederhausen, PhD

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health

• I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend using R Projects to organize your analyses and make it easier to load data files and also save output.
• When you create an R Project on your computer, the Project is associated with the folder (directory) you created it in.
  • This folder becomes the “root” of your working directory, and RStudio’s point of reference from where to load files from and to.
• I create separate Projects for every analysis project and every class I teach.
• You can run multiple sessions of RStudio by opening different Projects, and the environments (or working directory) of each are working independently of each other.

Note

• Although we are using Quarto files,
  • I will show how to set up and use a “regular” R Project
  • instead of “Quarto Project”
• Quarto Projects include extra features and thus complexity. Once you are used to how regular R Projects work, you can try out a Quarto Project.

Warning

• Many (if not most) of the resources below refer to RMarkdown instead of Quarto files to create reproducible reports.
• This is not a problem. Projects work the same way with Quarto files.

1 Learn more about Projects and why you should always be using them

Below are various resources to learn more about RStudio Projects.

• RStudio Projects and Working Directories: A Beginner’s Guide
  • From R-bloggers website
  • TOC
    • What is a RStudio Project, and why?
    • Easy file path referencing with RStudio Projects
    • Structuring your working directory
    • Further reading
• Posit’s (RStudio’s) directions on creating Projects
  • https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/200526207-Using-RStudio-Projects
  • This page provides concise directions, but not much motivation on why you should be using Projects.
• R for Data Science
  • Excellent book R for Data Science (2nd edition) by Hadley Wickham, Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel, and Garrett Grolemund
  • See Chapter 6 Section 2: Projects (https://r4ds.hadley.nz/workflow-scripts#projects) for
    • What is the source of truth?
    • Where does your analysis live?
    • RStudio Projects
    • Relative and absolute paths
    • Summary
• Jenny Bryant’s STAT 545 class notes
  • Check out Chapter 2 R basics and workflows https://stat545.com/r-basics.html
  • Section 2.2: Workspace and working directory
  • Section 2.3: RStudio Projects

2 YouTube videos on how to create an R Project

This video demonstrates how to create an R Project, and how to open RStudio using the Project file.

• The Basics of Projects in RStudio by Sam Burer
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKoSJGWnFFA
• Introduction to RStudio Projects by Michael Seaman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqOme7xsZvs