[R] ordinal variables

[Iasonas Lamprianou]

Dear colleagues,

I teach statistics using SPSS. I want to use R instead. I hit on one problem and I need some quick advice. When I want to work with ordinal variables, in SPSS I can compute the median or create a barchart or compute a spearman correlation with no problems. In R, if I "read" the ordinal variable as numeric, then I cannot do a barplot because I miss the category names. If I read the variables as characters, then I cannot run a spearman. How can I read a variable as numeric, still have the chance to assign value labels, and be able to get table of frequencies etc? I want to be able to do all these things in R commander. My students will probable be scared away if I try anything else other than R commander (just writing commands will not make them happy).

I hope I am not asking for too much. Hopefully there is a way