R: Connect to NAEP Data

readNAEP {EdSurvey}

R Documentation

Connect to NAEP Data

Description

Opens a connection to an NAEP data file residing on the disk and returns an edsurvey.data.frame with information about the file and data.

Usage

readNAEP(
  path,
  defaultWeight = "origwt",
  defaultPvs = "composite",
  omittedLevels = c("Multiple", NA, "Omitted"),
  frPath = NULL
)

Arguments

`path`	a character value indicating the full filepath location and name of the (.dat) data file
`defaultWeight`	a character value that indicates the default weight specified in the resulting `edsurvey.data.frame`. Default value is `origwt` if not specified.
`defaultPvs`	a character value that indicates the default plausible value specified in the resulting `edsurvey.data.frame`. Default value is `composite` if not specified.
`omittedLevels`	a character vector indicating which factor levels/labels should be excluded. When set to the default value of `c('Multiple',NA,'Omitted')`, adds the vector to the `edsurvey.data.frame`.
`frPath`	a character value indicating the location of the `fr2` parameter layout file included with the data companion to parse the specified `filepath` data file

Details

The function uses the frPath file layout (.fr2) data to read in the fixed-width data file (.dat) and builds the edsurvey.data.frame.

NAEP includes both scaled scores and theta scores, with the latter having names ending in \_theta.

When a NAEP administration includes a linking error variable those variables are included and end in _linking. When present, simply use the _linking version of a variable to get a standard error estimate that includes linking error.

Value

An edsurvey.data.frame containing the following elements:

`userConditions`	a list containing all user conditions set using the `subset.edsurvey.data.frame` method
`defaultConditions`	the default conditions to be applied to the `edsurvey.data.frame`
`data`	an `LaF` object containing a connection to the student dataset on disk
`dataSch`	an `LaF` object containing a connection to the school dataset on disk
`dataTch`	not applicable for NAEP data; returns `NULL`
`weights`	a list containing the weights found on the `edsurvey.data.frame`
`pvvar`	a list containing the plausible values found on the `edsurvey.data.frame`
`subject`	the subject of the dataset contained in the `edsurvey.data.frame`
`year`	the year of assessment of the dataset contained in the `edsurvey.data.frame`
`assessmentCode`	the code of the dataset contained in the `edsurvey.data.frame`
`dataType`	the type of data (whether student or school) contained in the `edsurvey.data.frame`
`gradeLevel`	the grade of the dataset contained in the `edsurvey.data.frame`
`achievementLevels`	default NAEP achievement cutoff scores
`omittedLevels`	the levels of the factor variables that will be omitted from the `edsurvey.data.frame`
`fileFormat`	a `data.frame` containing the parsed information from the student .fr2 file associated with the data
`fileFormatSchool`	a `data.frame` containing the parsed information from the school .fr2 file associated with the data
`fileFormatTeacher`	not applicable for NAEP data; returns `NULL`
`survey`	the type of survey data contained in the `edsurvey.data.frame`

Author(s)

Tom Fink and Ahmad Emad

Examples

## Not run: 
# read in the example data (generated, not real student data)
sdf <- readNAEP(system.file("extdata/data", "M36NT2PM.dat", package = "NAEPprimer"))
sdf

# To read in an NCES file first set the directory to the /Data subfolder,
# then read in the appropriate .dat file:
setwd("location/of/Data")
sdf <- readNAEP(path="M36NT2PM.dat")

# Or read in the .dat file directly through the folder pathway:
sdf <- readNAEP(path="location/of/Data/M36NT2PM.dat")

## End(Not run)

[Package EdSurvey version 2.7.1 Index]