Race/ethnicity in YRBS
In rimu: Responses in Multiplex

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE)

The usethnicity data set contains variables on race and ethnic identification from the 2017 Youth Risk Behaviour Survey, together with two variables on smoking behaviour. The YRBS is a multistage cluster-sampled survey, so valid inference about associations requires using survey design information. This subset of variables without weights is useful only for demonstration purposes.

library(rimu)
data(usethnicity)
head(usethnicity)

Question 4 asks Are you Hispanic or Latino?, and Question 5 asks for any of

A. American Indian or Alaska Native,
B. Asian,
C. Black or African American,
D. Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander,
E. White

that apply. In the data set, these five letters are pasted together into a single variable.

We need to split Q5 into its component letters. The \code{as.mr} method for character strings does this

race<-as.mr(usethnicity$Q5,"")
mtable(race)

There's a spurious " " category from the string splitting, and the values F, G, and H are also invalid, so we need to remove them

race<-mr_drop(race,c(" ","F","G","H"))
mtable(race)

We might want easier-to-recognise names for the categories

race <- mr_recode(race, AmIndian="A",Asian="B", Black="C", Pacific="D", White="E")

Now, Hispanic/Latino ethnicity is asked in a separate question. We convert it via the as.mr method for logical vectors, and then combine it with race

hispanic<-as.mr(usethnicity$Q4==1, "Hispanic")
ethnicity<-mr_union(race, hispanic)
ethnicity[101:120]

The plot method shows co-occurence of the various race/ethnicity terms

plot(ethnicity,nsets=6)

Tabulations against other factor or multiple-response variables are possible with mtable. Note that mtable shows frequencies for each category; use as.character to get frequencies for combinations -- do not use as.factor, which is not generic and so cannot have a mr method.

mtable(ethnicity, usethnicity$QN30)
table(ethnicity %has% "Black", usethnicity$QN30)
table(ethnicity %hasonly% "Black", usethnicity$QN30)
table(as.character(ethnicity), usethnicity$QN30)