[K12OSN] Request for suggestions regarding comprehensive statistics on a large survey

[Daniel Bo]

I'm a long-time member  of this list (K12OS 1.0) and know that there
are a ton of great people on it who offer great advice so my first
thought was to come here for the help I need.

OK, enough boot licking. Let's get down to business.

I have given a survey to 1400 elementary school students to study a
certain area of linguistics (specifically, comprehensible input theory
and the role of attitude and aptitude in L2 success). The amount of
data I have is overwhelming. I now need to do statistical analysis to
find out which of the 18 elements are correlated. I have no idea how
to do this other than to enter the data into Calc and do the
calculations manually. There has to be a better way.

People do this kind of thing all the time. How do they do it?

General suggestions are, of course, welcome, but I'd really like to
know how to isolate certain parts of the survey (being discrete) and
see if there are correlations among e.g. just grade level or section
number.

I haven't touched stats or matrix algebra in over twenty years, so go
easy on the heavy math talk  --  baby steps, please.

I love you guys in advance,

Daniel