Get IPUMS metadata information about variables loaded into R. Will try to read the metadata from the loaded datasets, but it is more reliable to load the DDI into a separate object and use it instead.
ipums_var_info(object, vars = NULL)
ipums_var_desc(object, var = NULL)
ipums_var_label(object, var = NULL)
ipums_val_labels(object, var = NULL)A DDI object (loaded with read_ipums_ddi), a data.frame
with ipums metadata attached, or a single column from an ipums data.frame.
dplyr select-style notation for the variables to
give information about
select-style notation for a single variable
ipums_var_info() loads all available variable information for one or more
variables into a data.frame. If object is a vector, it will include
the variable label, variable description and value labels. If object is
a data.frame, it will include it for all variables (or only those specified
by vars). If it is a DDI, it will also include information used to read the
data from disk, including start/end position in the fixed-width file, implied
decimals and variable type.
ipums_var_desc() loads the variable description for a single variable.
ipums_var_label() loads the short variable label for a single variable.
ipums_val_labels() loads the value labels for a single variable.
Note that many R functions drop attributes that provide this information.
In order to make sure that they are available, it is best to keep a copy of the
separate from the data your are manipulating using read_ipums_ddi. Then
you can refer to the IPUMS documentation in this object.
ipums_var_info returns a tbl_df data frame with variable information, and
the other functions return a length 1 character vector.
ddi <- read_ipums_ddi(ipums_example("cps_00006.xml"))
ipums_var_info(ddi)
#> # A tibble: 8 × 10
#> var_name var_la…¹ var_d…² val_la…³ code_…⁴ start end imp_d…⁵ var_t…⁶ recty…⁷
#> <chr> <chr> <chr> <list> <chr> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <chr> <lgl>
#> 1 YEAR Survey … "YEAR … <tibble> "\nYEA… 1 4 0 numeric NA
#> 2 SERIAL Househo… "SERIA… <tibble> "\nSER… 5 9 0 numeric NA
#> 3 HWTSUPP Househo… "HWTSU… <tibble> "\nHWT… 10 19 4 numeric NA
#> 4 STATEFIP State (… "STATE… <tibble> NA 20 21 0 integer NA
#> 5 MONTH Month "MONTH… <tibble> NA 22 23 0 integer NA
#> 6 PERNUM Person … "PERNU… <tibble> "\nPER… 24 25 0 numeric NA
#> 7 WTSUPP Supplem… "WTSUP… <tibble> "\nWTS… 26 35 4 numeric NA
#> 8 INCTOT Total p… "INCTO… <tibble> "\n999… 36 43 0 numeric NA
#> # … with abbreviated variable names ¹var_label, ²var_desc, ³val_labels,
#> # ⁴code_instr, ⁵imp_decim, ⁶var_type, ⁷rectypes
ipums_var_desc(ddi, MONTH)
#> [1] "MONTH indicates the calendar month of the CPS interview."
ipums_var_label(ddi, MONTH)
#> [1] "Month"
ipums_val_labels(ddi, MONTH)
#> # A tibble: 12 × 2
#> val lbl
#> <dbl> <chr>
#> 1 1 January
#> 2 2 February
#> 3 3 March
#> 4 4 April
#> 5 5 May
#> 6 6 June
#> 7 7 July
#> 8 8 August
#> 9 9 September
#> 10 10 October
#> 11 11 November
#> 12 12 December