A fellow sufferer!

How can social scientists learn database skills? | Ask MetaFilter:

"I am a computer guy who has been working extensively with a couple of psychologists on a research project. I knew they were more comfortable with single-table (flat-file or spreadsheet) data representation for data storage, but in this case their study generated much data, and so highly-related data, that I convinced them to give a database a shot. Long story short: half a year later, they're still a little mystified by SQL and wouldn't be able to design their own table schemas if their lives depended on it, but they see the very strong advantages databases have over spreadsheets for their needs. Furthermore, we're writing a paper about how to replicate the study we did, and we want to include a bit about why we used a database instead of a spreadsheet and why we think anyone replicating the study should consider doing the same thing. "