fauxnaif

In fauxnaif: Convert Values to NA

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Getting started

To demonstrate the basic functionality of fauxnaif, let's first load the package and an example dataset.

library(fauxnaif)
library(magrittr)
fauxnaif::faux_census

We can see the example dataset in full above. The data is a small section of census-like information. This dataset needs a lot of cleaning. Other tools like dplyr and tidyr would likely be needed to really analyze this data, but we'll focus on the aspects that can be handled by fauxnaif.

The most basic case

First, let's look at the simplest issue in this dataset: income.

faux_census$income

Printing the vector of incomes, one value stands out: while most respondents' have values in the tens to hundreds of thousands, two respondents have incomes of 9999999. It's common for datasets you receive from other sources to use an unrealistically high value (often a string of 9s) to indicate NA. We can clean this using na_if_in().

na_if_in(faux_census$income, 9999999)

The new variable has NAs in the place of those strings of 9s.

As an alternative, we can use the magrittr pipe (%>%) to pass an input into na_if_in():

faux_census$income %>% na_if_in(9999999)

This produces the same result.

This task could have been completed using the version of na_if_in() included in the dplyr package. However, moving forward we will use more advanced functionality of fauxnaif.

Replacing multiple values

Let's now examine the age variable:

faux_census$age

In this case, we see two improbable values: 557 and 2 (assuming this is a survey of adults). Using dplyr, this would have to be addressed using two steps:

faux_census$age %>% dplyr::na_if(557) %>% dplyr::na_if(2)

But using fauxnaif we can simplify this to a single step:

faux_census$age %>% na_if_in(557, 2)

Specifying values to keep rather than values to discard

In the above example, we were able to examine our dataset and select the values that were unrealistic. In real-life analyses, we often can't look at each observation one by one to find unrealistic values, but we often do know the range of realistic values. Using na_if_not(), we can specify which values are realistic and discard those that are not.

Returning to the age variable, let's replace values with NA if they are not between 18 (the minimum age we expect to enter the survey) and 122 (the world record for the oldest person).

faux_census$age %>% na_if_not(18:122)

This has the same effect as specifying the unrealistic values directly, but no longer requires you to directly examine each observation.

Replacing values using formulas

Another way to approach this problem is to use a formula to specify the range of acceptable values. This is particularly useful when dealing with non-integer values, where the colon operator (:) will not work:

23 %in% 18:122

but

23.5 %in% 18:122

Formulas in fauxnaif are based on the formula syntax used in rlang and purrr. They are introduced with a tilde (~) and indicate each observation with a dot (.).

To clean the age variable, we can use two formulas. One will replace values less than 18 and another will replace values greater than 122:

faux_census$age %>% na_if_in(~ . < 18, ~ . > 122)

Or we can use the between() function from dplyr:

library(dplyr)

faux_census$age %>% na_if_in(~ !between(., 18, 122))

Using formulas for non-numeric variables

Formulas are not only useful when dealing with numeric variables. While it's straightforward to use relational operators to specify replacements in numeric variables, we can also use more complex formulas to handle other data types.

Let's take a look at the religion variable:

faux_census$religion

While there are a few things we might want to clean in this variable, one clear issue is the respondent who did not answer the question but instead used the space to give an opinion: "Religion is the opiate of the people".

We could use the most basic form of na_if_in() to simply remove this answer:

faux_census$religion %>% na_if_in("Religion is the opiate of the people")

But in a larger analysis, we may prefer to have a simple rule for excluding answers. Perhaps we decide that answers longer than 25 characters are unlikely to be genuine. In that case, we can use a formula operating on the number of characters (nchar(.)) in a response:

faux_census$religion %>% na_if_in(~ nchar(.) > 25)

Replacing values in data frames

Often in data analysis, we prefer to work within a single data frame than operating on individual vectors. fauxnaif is built to handle this use case.

A simple solution is to use na_if_in() or na_if_not() within dplyr's mutate() function.

library(dplyr)

faux_census %>% mutate(income = na_if_in(income, 9999999))

Replacing values in multiple columns

Sometimes, the same replacement function can be used in multiple columns. Here, the respondent who didn't give a real answer to the religion question seemed to do the same with the gender and race questions. You can specify multiple columns using dplyr's across() is you would like to make replacements based on the same criteria:

faux_census %>%
  mutate(across(c(religion, gender, race), na_if_in, ~ nchar(.) > 25))

Replacing values using a predicate function

Rather than specifying columns manually, we can also select columns using a predicate function with dplyr's where().

For example, we may want to remove strings of 9s in any numeric column:

faux_census %>% mutate(across(where(is.numeric), na_if_in, ~ grepl("999", .)))

Replacing values in all columns

While this replacement was intended for three specific columns, no variable contains a legitimate answer longer than 25 characters. In this case, rather than specifying the variable of interest, we can simply use dplyr's everything() to make the replacement in all columns:

faux_census %>% mutate(across(everything(), na_if_in, ~ nchar(.) > 25))

Putting it all together

In a data analysis pipeline, we can combine several steps to produce a usable dataset. Combining our interval check for age, our check for strings of 9s in numeric variables, and our check for long responses in character variables, we can yield much cleaner data:

faux_census %>%
  mutate(
    age = na_if_not(age, 18:122),
    across(where(is.numeric), na_if_in, ~ grepl("999", .)),
    across(everything(), na_if_in, ~ nchar(.) > 25)
  )

fauxnaif documentation built on Aug. 13, 2022, 1:05 a.m.