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Calculate descriptive statistics.

Source: R/calculateDescriptives.R
calculateDescriptives.Rd

Calculate descriptive statistics which should be included in the codebook.

Usage

calculateDescriptives(
  GADSdat,
  inputForDescriptives,
  verbose = FALSE,
  showCallOnly = FALSE
)

Arguments

GADSdat

Object of class GADSdat, created for example by import_spss from the eatGADS package.

inputForDescriptives

data.frame with variable information. This table can either be created manually in Excel or generated from GADSdat object, using the function createInputForDescriptives. If you need a template of what this table should look like for different variables, you can use the varInfo object created in the examples below. Specifically, the data.frame must contain the following columns.

  • varName: This character column should contain all variable names that are part of the GADS database.

  • varLabel: The variable label of the corresponding variable in the varName column

  • format: This character columns yields the format of the corresponding variable in the varName column, for example F8.0

  • imp: Logical column (i.e., TRUE/FALSE) which indicates whether the variable is imputed

  • type: Character column with possible entries variable, item, fake_item or scale. The entry variable should be used for individual variables in the GADSdat database that belong neither to a scale nor to a fake scale. The entry item should be used for items which belong to a scale. No distinction needs to be made as to which scale these items belong to. It is only important that the database contains one or more scales for each of these items. Assume that the database contains the scales "self concept" and "interest", where "self concept" is measured with the items SK_I1, SK_I2, SK_I3, and "interest" is measured with the items Int_I1, Int_I2, Int_I3, Int_I4. Then SK_I1, SK_I2, SK_I3, Int_I1, Int_I2, Int_I3, and Int_I4 should occur in the varName column, and the corresponding entry in type should be item. Note that the database also contains the scale variables of "self concept" and "interest". The entry fake_item should be used for items that theoretically constitute one or more latent scales, but for which no scale variable is contained in the database.

  • scale: Character column with the scale level of the corresponding variable. Possible entries are numeric for metric variables, ordinal for categorical (factor) variables, or nominal.

  • group: Character column which is only relevant for items, scales or fake scale variables. For all others, only the variable name is transferred here. For the other variables, an indicator is defined here that contains the assignment of items to their scales. Assume that the database contains the scale "self concept" which is measured with the items SK_I1, SK_I2, SK_I3. Let the scale variable of "self concept" be called SC. A common entry for SK_I1, SK_I2, SK_I3, and scaleSelfConcept should be entered in the group column, for example "scaleSelfConcept"

verbose

Print variable and function information to console?

showCallOnly

Logical: only for diagnostics. If TRUE, no calculation is proceed, and only the function which is called for calculation is returned.

Value

Returns a list of descriptive statistics. This format may seem unsuitable for direct further processing in R, but is primarily used for the automatic creation of codebooks using Latex.

Examples

# import spss exemplary data
file <- system.file("extdata", "example1_clean.sav", package = "eatCodebook")
dat   <- eatGADS::import_spss(file)
# create variable information by the eatCodebbok function createInputForDescriptives
# This table 'varInfo' can be exported to Excel for further inspection and used as a
# blueprint of what the necessary 'inputForDescriptives' argument for the
# calculateDescriptives() function should look like
varInfo <- createInputForDescriptives(dat, impExpr = "plausible value")
# calculate descriptives
descr <- calculateDescriptives(dat, varInfo)
#> Warning: `report()` was deprecated in eatRep 0.15.0.
#> ℹ For the original behavior of report() please use eatRep version 0.14.7:
#>   'https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/eatRep/'
#> ℹ The deprecated feature was likely used in the eatCodebook package.
#>   Please report the issue to the authors.