ipums_var_info: Get contextual information about variables in an IPUMS data...

In ipumsr: An R Interface for Downloading, Reading, and Handling IPUMS Data

Get contextual information about variables in an IPUMS data source

Description

Summarize the variable metadata for the variables found in an ipums_ddi object or data frame. Provides descriptions of variable content (var_label and var_desc) as well as labels of particular values for each variable (val_labels).

ipums_var_info() produces a tibble summary of multiple variables at once.

ipums_var_label(), ipums_var_desc(), and ipums_val_labels() provide specific metadata for a single variable.

Usage

ipums_var_info(object, vars = NULL)

ipums_var_label(object, var = NULL)

ipums_var_desc(object, var = NULL)

ipums_val_labels(object, var = NULL)

Arguments

object	An ipums_ddi object, a data frame containing variable metadata (as produced by most ipumsr data-reading functions), or a haven::labelled() vector from a single column in such a data frame.
vars, var	A tidyselect selection identifying the variable(s) to include in the output. Only ipums_var_info() allows for the selection of multiple variables.

Details

For ipums_var_info(), if the provided object is a haven::labelled() vector (i.e. a single column from a data frame), the summary output will include the variable label, variable description, and value labels, if applicable.

If it is a data frame, the same information will be provided for all variables present in the data or to those indicated in vars.

If it is an ipums_ddi object, the summary will also include information used when reading the data from disk, including start/end positions for columns in the fixed-width file, implied decimals, and variable types.

Providing an ipums_ddi object is the most robust way to access variable metadata, as many data processing operations will remove these attributes from data frame-like objects.

Value

For ipums_var_info(), a tibble containing variable information.

Otherwise, a length-1 character vector with the requested variable information.

See Also

read_ipums_ddi() or read_nhgis_codebook() to read IPUMS metadata files.

Examples

ddi <- read_ipums_ddi(ipums_example("cps_00157.xml"))

# Info for all variables in a data source
ipums_var_info(ddi)

# Metadata for individual variables
ipums_var_desc(ddi, MONTH)

ipums_var_label(ddi, MONTH)

ipums_val_labels(ddi, MONTH)

# NHGIS also supports variable-level metadata, though many fields
# are not relevant and remain blank:
cb <- read_nhgis_codebook(ipums_example("nhgis0972_csv.zip"))

ipums_var_info(cb)

ipumsr documentation built on June 8, 2025, 1:30 p.m.