[R] turning comma separated string from multiple choices into

[Bob Rudis]

Take a look at tidyr::separate()

On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 12:57 PM, silvia giussani
<silvia1.giussani at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>
>
> could you please tell me if you find a solution to this problem (in
> Subject)?
>
>
>
> June Kim wrote:
>
>>* Hello,*
>
>>
>
>>* I use google docs' Forms to conduct surveys online. Multiple choices*
>
>>* questions are coded as comma separated values.*
>
>>
>
>>* For example,*
>
>>
>
>>* if the question is like:*
>
>>
>
>>* 1. What magazines do you currently subscribe to? (you can choose*
>
>>* multiple choices)*
>
>>* 1) Fast Company*
>
>>* 2) Havard Business Review*
>
>>* 3) Business Week*
>
>>* 4) The Economist*
>
>>
>
>>* And if the subject chose 1) and 3), the data is coded as a cell in a*
>
>>* spreadsheet as,*
>
>>
>
>>* "Fast Company, Business Week"*
>
>>
>
>>* I read the data with read.csv into R. To analyze the data, I have to*
>
>>* change that string into something like flags(indicator variables?).*
>
>>* That is, there should be 4 variables, of which values are either 1 or*
>
>>* 0, indicating chosen or not-chosen respectively.*
>
>>
>
>>* Suppose the data is something like,*
>
>>
>
>>
>
>>>* survey1*
>
>>>
>
>>*   age                                    favorite_magazine*
>
>>* 1  29                                         Fast Company*
>
>>* 2  31                          Fast Company, Business Week*
>
>>* 3  32 Havard Business Review, Business Week, The Economist*
>
>>
>
>>
>
>>* Then I have to chop the string in favorite_magazine column to turn*
>
>>* that data into something like,*
>
>>
>
>>
>
>>>* survey1transformed*
>
>>>
>
>>*   age Fast Company Havard Business Review Business Week The Economist*
>
>>* 1  29            1                      0             0             0*
>
>>* 2  31            1                      0             1             0*
>
>>* 3  32            0                      1             1             1*
>
>>
>
>>
>
>>* Actually I have many more multiple choice questions in the survey.*
>
>>
>
>>* What is the easy elegant and natural way in R to do the job?*
>
>>
>
>
>
> I'd look into something like as.data.frame(lapply(strings, grep,
>
> x=favorite_magazine, fixed=TRUE)), where strings <- c("Fast Company",
>
> "Havard Business Review", ...).
>
>
>
> (I take it that the mechanism is such that you can rely on at least
>
> having everything misspelled in the same way? If it is alternatingly
>
> "Havard" and "Harvard", then things get a bit trickier.)
>
>
>
> Thank you and regards,
>
> Silvia Giussani
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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