If you arrive here with the expectation to find a quick instruction to run and use GGIR for your research then we have to disappoint you. The number of GGIR functionalities is vast and mastering them requires a time investment. In this section we will only provide you with a brief introduction on how GGIR is used. However, to fully benefit from all the functionality GGIR offers we recommend that you read the chapters on this website and/or consider taking part in the GGIR training.
The first step to get started is to install R, Rstudio, and GGIR as discussed here.
If you have never used R before, we strongly recommend that you follow a R introduction course. In this blog post we have attempted to provide a short tutorial. Nonetheless, the more effort you make to master the basics of R the easier it will be for you to master GGIR.
Next, make sure you have at least one accelerometer file available on your computer. If you do not have an accelerometer file, feel free to use the files from the GGIR training link. This is a zipped folder of 369MB with 4 accelerometer files and a sleep log.
Run GGIR for the first time
First, you will need to place your file(s) in a folder on your computer. Make sure that this folder only contains accelerometer files.
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Use the following command to run GGIR.
datadir refers to the directory where you have located the accelerometer files.
outputdir refers to the directory where you want to store GGIR’s output.
After some minutes, you should be able to see how your output directory gets populated with files, reports, and visualizations.
This command will let GGIR run with all its default settings (parameters), so the analysis is not tailored yet to the study design and your research question. The documentation chapters you will find on this website will guide you through this.