Convenient way to access variables label after importing Stata data with haven

Question

In R, some packages (e.g. haven) insert a label attributes to variables (e.g. haven), which explains the substantive name of the variable. For example, gdppc may have the label GDP per capita.

This is extremely useful, especially when importing data from Stata. However, I still struggle to know how to use this in my workflow.

1. How to quickly browse the variable and the variable label? Right now I have to do attributes(df$var), but this is hardly convenient to get a glimpse (a la names(df))

2. How to use these labels in plots? Again, I can use attr(df$var, "label") to access the string label. However, it seems cumbersome.

Is there any official way to use these labels in a workflow? I can certainly write a custom function that wraps around the attr, but it may break in the future when packages implement the label attribute differently. Thus, ideally I'd want an official way supported by haven (or other major packages).

Choreographer

You could create something like a matching table, e.g. lbs <- setNames(_labels_, names(df)); then accessing the label can be done via, e.g., lbs["var"] – Turbellarian

Various package authors have implemented it differently. The de_facto R standard would be the read.dta function in pkg:foreign. haven is a relatively recent package and at the moment it doesn't seem to have documented plans for labels. – Tarter

@42- read_dta in haven does have label. In contrast, foreign::read.dta actually doesn't. Also, the foreign packages does not work with Stata 13, let alone 14. – Choreographer

Your question has no example. The help page for read.dta says the value will be: "A data frame with attributes. These will include "datalabel", "time.stamp", "formats", "types", "val.labels", "var.labels" and "version" and may include "label.table" and "expansion.table". – Tarter

You asked about the "official"/idiomatic way of dealing with labels, which is probably best found in foreign. Glancing through the foreign doc, they suggest the readstata13 package for later versions of Stata. Presumably it also conforms to whatever idiom/norm is found in foreign. – Manumission

@42- I stand corrected, foreign does have a var.labels attribute that is attached to the data frame. This is different from haven, but this shows your point that there are different implementations. – Choreographer

@Choreographer You might be able to help with this one: #56787626 – Wolver

Answer 1

A solution with purrr package from tidyverse:

df %>% map_chr(~attributes(.)$label)

Sherlene

Answer 2

Using sapply in a simple function to return a variable list as in Stata's Variable Window:

library(dplyr)
makeVlist <- function(dta) { 
     labels <- sapply(dta, function(x) attr(x, "label"))
      tibble(name = names(labels),
             label = labels)
}

Bombazine

Answer 3

This is one of the innovations addressed in rio (full disclosure: I wrote this package). Basically, it provides various ways of importing variable labels, including haven's way of doing things and foreign's. Here's a trivial example:

Start by making a reproducible example:

> library("rio")
> export(iris, "iris.dta")

Import using foreign::read.dta() (via rio::import()):

> str(import("iris.dta", haven = FALSE))
'data.frame':   150 obs. of  5 variables:
 $ Sepal.Length: num  5.1 4.9 4.7 4.6 5 5.4 4.6 5 4.4 4.9 ...
 $ Sepal.Width : num  3.5 3 3.2 3.1 3.6 3.9 3.4 3.4 2.9 3.1 ...
 $ Petal.Length: num  1.4 1.4 1.3 1.5 1.4 1.7 1.4 1.5 1.4 1.5 ...
 $ Petal.Width : num  0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.1 ...
 $ Species     : Factor w/ 3 levels "setosa","versicolor",..: 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
 - attr(*, "datalabel")= chr ""
 - attr(*, "time.stamp")= chr "15 Jan 2016 20:05"
 - attr(*, "formats")= chr  "" "" "" "" ...
 - attr(*, "types")= int  255 255 255 255 253
 - attr(*, "val.labels")= chr  "" "" "" "" ...
 - attr(*, "var.labels")= chr  "" "" "" "" ...
 - attr(*, "version")= int -7
 - attr(*, "label.table")=List of 1
  ..$ Species: Named int  1 2 3
  .. ..- attr(*, "names")= chr  "setosa" "versicolor" "virginica"

Read in using haven::read_dta() using its native variable attributes because the attributes are stored at the data.frame level rather than the variable level:

> str(import("iris.dta", haven = TRUE, column.labels = TRUE))
'data.frame':   150 obs. of  5 variables:
 $ Sepal.Length: num  5.1 4.9 4.7 4.6 5 5.4 4.6 5 4.4 4.9 ...
 $ Sepal.Width : num  3.5 3 3.2 3.1 3.6 3.9 3.4 3.4 2.9 3.1 ...
 $ Petal.Length: num  1.4 1.4 1.3 1.5 1.4 1.7 1.4 1.5 1.4 1.5 ...
 $ Petal.Width : num  0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.1 ...
 $ Species     :Class 'labelled'  atomic [1:150] 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
  .. ..- attr(*, "labels")= Named int [1:3] 1 2 3
  .. .. ..- attr(*, "names")= chr [1:3] "setosa" "versicolor" "virginica"

Read in using haven::read_dta() using an alternative that we (the rio developers) have found more convenient:

> str(import("iris.dta", haven = TRUE))
'data.frame':   150 obs. of  5 variables:
 $ Sepal.Length: num  5.1 4.9 4.7 4.6 5 5.4 4.6 5 4.4 4.9 ...
 $ Sepal.Width : num  3.5 3 3.2 3.1 3.6 3.9 3.4 3.4 2.9 3.1 ...
 $ Petal.Length: num  1.4 1.4 1.3 1.5 1.4 1.7 1.4 1.5 1.4 1.5 ...
 $ Petal.Width : num  0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.1 ...
 $ Species     : Factor w/ 3 levels "setosa","versicolor",..: 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
 - attr(*, "var.labels")=List of 5
  ..$ Sepal.Length: NULL
  ..$ Sepal.Width : NULL
  ..$ Petal.Length: NULL
  ..$ Petal.Width : NULL
  ..$ Species     : NULL
 - attr(*, "label.table")=List of 5
  ..$ Sepal.Length: NULL
  ..$ Sepal.Width : NULL
  ..$ Petal.Length: NULL
  ..$ Petal.Width : NULL
  ..$ Species     : Named int  1 2 3
  .. ..- attr(*, "names")= chr  "setosa" "versicolor" "virginica"

By moving the attributes to be at the level of the data.frame, they're much easier to access using attr(data, "label.var"), etc. rather than digging through each variable's attributes.

Note: the values of attributes will be NULL because I'm just writing a native R dataset to a local file in order to make this reproducible.

Incorrupt

Do you use rio in your own workflow? How committed is the team to staying up to date with all the IO packages that you guys wrap around? I'd love to have a centralized package like this (hence I tried haven), but worry about future reproducibility. – Choreographer

@Choreographer We are very committed to keeping things up to date and I am very sensitive to backwards/forwards compatibility. – Incorrupt

Answer 4

Use the haven package to force to a factor

haven::as_factor(df$var, levels="label")

Kamilahkamillah

Answer 5

A simple solution with the labelled package (tidyverse)

descriptions <- var_label(data_raw) %>% 
  as_tibble() %>% 
  gather(key = variable, value = description)

Gristede

Answer 6

The purpose of the labelled package is to provide convenient functions to manipulate variable and value labels as imported with haven.

In addition, the functions lookfor and describe from the questionr package are also useful to display variable and value labels.

Protasis