to_factor: To factor

In codebook: Automatic Codebooks from Metadata Encoded in Dataset Attributes

Description

Convert a labelled vector to a factor, even if it doesn't have the proper class, as long as it has the "labels" attribute. You can have this attribute without, for example, the haven_labelled class, when importing data with rio::import() for example.

Usage

to_factor(x, ...)

Arguments

x	a vector
...	passed to haven::as_factor()

Examples

example("labelled", "haven")
to_factor(x)
to_factor(zap_labelled(x))
to_factor(as_factor(x))
to_factor(1:4)

Example output

lablld> s1 <- labelled(c("M", "M", "F"), c(Male = "M", Female = "F"))

lablld> s2 <- labelled(c(1, 1, 2), c(Male = 1, Female = 2))

lablld> s3 <- labelled(c(1, 1, 2), c(Male = 1, Female = 2),
lablld+                label="Assigned sex at birth")

lablld> # Unfortunately it's not possible to make as.factor work for labelled objects
lablld> # so instead use as_factor. This works for all types of labelled vectors.
lablld> as_factor(s1)
[1] Male   Male   Female
Levels: Female Male

lablld> as_factor(s1, levels = "values")
[1] M M F
Levels: M F

lablld> as_factor(s2)
[1] Male   Male   Female
Levels: Male Female

lablld> # Other statistical software supports multiple types of missing values
lablld> s3 <- labelled(c("M", "M", "F", "X", "N/A"),
lablld+   c(Male = "M", Female = "F", Refused = "X", "Not applicable" = "N/A")
lablld+ )

lablld> s3
<labelled<character>[5]>
[1] M   M   F   X   N/A

Labels:
 value          label
     M           Male
     F         Female
     X        Refused
   N/A Not applicable

lablld> as_factor(s3)
[1] Male           Male           Female         Refused        Not applicable
Levels: Female Male Not applicable Refused

lablld> # Often when you have a partially labelled numeric vector, labelled values
lablld> # are special types of missing. Use zap_labels to replace labels with missing
lablld> # values
lablld> x <- labelled(c(1, 2, 1, 2, 10, 9), c(Unknown = 9, Refused = 10))

lablld> zap_labels(x)
[1]  1  2  1  2 10  9
[1] 1       2       1       2       Refused Unknown
Levels: 1 2 Unknown Refused
[1] 1       2       1       2       Refused Unknown
Levels: 1 2 Unknown Refused
[1] 1       2       1       2       Refused Unknown
Levels: 1 2 Unknown Refused
[1] 1 2 3 4
Levels: 1 2 3 4

codebook documentation built on July 1, 2020, 10:28 p.m.