var.names {cobalt}

Extract Variable Names from bal.tab Objects

Description

This function extracts variable names from a bal.tab object for use in specifying alternate variable names in love.plot(). Optionally, a file can be written for easy editing of names.

Usage

var.names(b, type, file = NULL, minimal = FALSE)

Arguments

b

a bal.tab object; the output of a call to bal.tab().

type

the type of output desired. Can either be "df" for a data.frame or "vec" for a named vector. See "Value". The default is "vec" unless file is not NULL.

file

optional; a file name to save the output if type = "df". See utils::write.csv(), which var.name() calls. Must end in .csv.

minimal

whether the output should contain all variable names (i.e., all rows that appear the output of bal.tab()) or just the unique base variables. See "Details".

Details

The goal of the function is to make supplying new variable names to the var.names argument in love.plot() easier. Rather than manually creating a vector or data.frame with all the variable names that one desires to change, one can use var.names() to extract variable names from a bal.tab object and edit the output. Importantly, the output can be saved to a CSV file, which can be easily edited and read back into R for use in love.plot(), as demonstrated in the Example.

When minimal = TRUE, only a minimal set of variables will be output. For example, if the variables analyzed in bal.tab() are age, race, and married, and int = TRUE in bal.tab(), many variables will appear in the output, including expansions of the factor variables, the polynomial terms, and the interactions. Rather than renaming all of these variables individually, one can rename just the three base variables, and all variables that arise from them will be accordingly renamed. Setting minimal = TRUE requests only these base variables.

Value

If type = "vec", a character vector the the variable names both as the names and the entries.

If type = "df", a data.frame with two columns called "old" and "new", each with the variables as the entries.

If file is not NULL, the output will be returned invisibly.

Note

Not all programs can properly read the Unicode characters for the polynomial terms when requested. These may appear strange in, e.g., Excel, but R will process the characters correctly.

Examples

data(lalonde, package = "cobalt")

b1 <- bal.tab(treat ~ age + race + married, data = lalonde,
              int = TRUE)
v1 <- var.names(b1, type = "vec", minimal = TRUE)
v1["age"] <- "Age (Years)"
v1["race"] <- "Race/Eth"
v1["married"] <- "Married"
love.plot(b1, var.names = v1)
## Not run: 
b2 <- bal.tab(treat ~ age + race + married + educ + nodegree +
                  re74 + re75 + I(re74==0) + I(re75==0), 
              data = lalonde)
var.names(b2, file = "varnames.csv")

##Manually edit the CSV (e.g., in Excel), then save it.
v2 <- read.csv("varnames.csv")
love.plot(b2, var.names = v2)

## End(Not run)