combine_checkboxes: Combine checkbox variables into a single list column

In ABCDscores: Summary Scores of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study

Combine checkbox variables into a single list column

Description

Takes a group of checkbox-style variables, have a common prefix and numeric suffixes representing options, and combines them into a single list column where each element is a vector of selected options (numbers).

This function expects the input data to include participant_id and session_id columns, which are used to group responses. For each participant and session, it collects all checkbox numbers that were selected as a single list. The resulting column can be renamed via the name parameter.

Usage

combine_checkboxes(data, var_basename, var_sep = "___", name = NULL)

Arguments

data	tbl. Data frame containing the participant responses.
var_basename	character of length 1. The base name of the checkbox field.
var_sep	character of length 1. The string separating the base name of the checkbox and the checkbox value. Default is "___". In the default scenario, all checkbox columns to be collapsed are expected in the format, ⁠{ var_basename }___{ value }⁠, where three underscores separate the checkbox basename and the checkbox value.
name	character of length 1 or NULL. Optional. The name of the output column that will store the combined checkbox selections. If NULL, the value of var_basename is used as the output column name.

Value

tbl. The input data frame with an additional column containing a list of integers corresponding to the selected checkbox options for each participant and session.

Examples

# Example data
dat <- tibble::tibble(
  participant_id = c(1, 1, 2),
  session_id = c(1, 2, 1),
  q1___1 = c(1, NA, 0),
  q1___2 = c(0, 1, 1),
  q1___3 = c(NA, NA, 0)
)

# Combine q1 checkboxes into a single list column
combine_checkboxes(dat, var_basename = "q1")

# Combine and rename the output column
combine_checkboxes(dat, var_basename = "q1", name = "q1_combined")

ABCDscores documentation built on Nov. 12, 2026, 1:07 a.m.