build_linker {dataMeta}

Build a linker data frame.

Description

build_linker constructs a data frame that will be an intermediary between the original dataset and the data dictionary. This is the first function used in this package. For the function to run, the following parameters are needed.

Usage

build_linker(my.data, variable_description, variable_type)

Arguments

my.data

Data.frame. The data set for which the user is creating the dictionary for.

variable_description

A string vector representing the different descriptions that the user will give to each variable name from the original dataset. These need to be in the same order as the original dataset's variable names.

variable_type

A vector of integers with values 0 or 1, only. Use 0 for variable names for which a range of values will be presented and 1 to show unique cases of each variable name option. See examples, below.

Value

If the original dataset supplied as my.data is of class data.frame; the variable description items are in the same order as the orignal dataset's variable names; and the variable_type intgeer vector values are 0 or 1, then a small data frame is produced with variable_names, variable_description, variable_type columns. This dataframe will serve as a linker data frame to be able to construct the data dictionary.

Examples

# example original data set for which a dictionary will be made
data("esoph")
my.data <- esoph

# Add description for each variable names and variable type
variable_description <- c("age group", "alcohol consumption", "tobacco consumption", 
"number of cases", "number of controls")

variable_type <- c(0, 0, 0, 0, 0)

linker <- build_linker(my.data = my.data, variable_description = variable_description, 
variable_type = variable_type)
linker

## Not run: 
variable_description <- c("age group", "alcohol consumption", "tobacco consumption", 
"number of cases", "number of controls")
variable_type <- c(0, 2, 0, 0, 0)
linker <- build_linker(my.data = my.data, variable_description = variable_description, 
variable_type = variable_type)
linker

## End(Not run)