In the previous installment we sucked some data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey into R and did some preliminary work. Now we are going to play the some categorical data.
There is already one categorical field in the data representing gender. However, the labels are not ideal:
head(DS0012)
id gender age mass height BMI
1 41475 2 62 138.9 1.547 58.03923
2 41476 2 6 22.0 1.204 15.17643
3 41477 1 71 83.9 1.671 30.04755
5 41479 1 52 65.7 1.544 27.55946
6 41480 1 6 27.0 1.227 17.93390
7 41481 1 21 77.9 1.827 23.33782
> unique(DS0012$gender)
[1] 2 1
Reference to the excellent codebook accompanying the data reveals that one should interpret 1 as male and 2 as female. We can make things a little more transparent by converting this field to a factor and introducing appropriate labels.
DS0012$gender <- factor(DS0012$gender, labels = c("M", "F"))
head(DS0012)
id gender age mass height BMI
1 41475 F 62 138.9 1.547 58.03923
2 41476 F 6 22.0 1.204 15.17643
3 41477 M 71 83.9 1.671 30.04755
5 41479 M 52 65.7 1.544 27.55946
6 41480 M 6 27.0 1.227 17.93390
7 41481 M 21 77.9 1.827 23.33782
That’s better! Next we introduce a new categorical field which indicates age group. The boundaries between these fields are somewhat arbitrary (and might be rather politically incorrect), but they more or less make sense. Note that respondents above the age of 80 had their ages simply coded as 80.
# [ 0, 13) - child
# [13, 18) - teenager
# [18, 40) - adult
# [40, 60) - mature
# > 60 - senior
#
DS0012$age.category <- cut(DS0012$age, breaks = c(0, 13, 18, 40, 60, 81), right = FALSE,
labels = c("child", "teenager", "adult", "mature", "senior"))
head(DS0012)
id gender age mass height BMI age.category
1 41475 F 62 138.9 1.547 58.03923 senior
2 41476 F 6 22.0 1.204 15.17643 child
3 41477 M 71 83.9 1.671 30.04755 senior
5 41479 M 52 65.7 1.544 27.55946 mature
6 41480 M 6 27.0 1.227 17.93390 child
7 41481 M 21 77.9 1.827 23.33782 adult
Finally we introduce BMI categories. These are rather broad categories, but will suffice for our analysis.
# < 18.5 - underweight
# 18.5 to 25.0 - normal
# 25.0 to 30.0 - overweight
# > 30 - obese
#
DS0012$BMI.category <- cut(DS0012$BMI, breaks = c(0, 18.5, 25, 30, 100),
labels = c("underweight", "normal", "overweight", "obese"))
This is what the final data look like
head(DS0012)
id gender age mass height BMI age.category BMI.category
1 41475 F 62 138.9 1.547 58.03923 senior obese
2 41476 F 6 22.0 1.204 15.17643 child underweight
3 41477 M 71 83.9 1.671 30.04755 senior obese
5 41479 M 52 65.7 1.544 27.55946 mature overweight
6 41480 M 6 27.0 1.227 17.93390 child underweight
7 41481 M 21 77.9 1.827 23.33782 adult normal
Next installment: some descriptive statistics.