rspsslabeling

Label variables with lookup table and sjlabelled::set_label

I need to label a lot of variables with sjlabelled::set_label. Here is a reproducable example and what already works:

library(data.table)
library(sjlabelled)

lookup <- data.table(id = paste0("q", 1:5),
                     question = paste0("qtext", 1:5))

data <- data.table(q1 = sample(1:5, 10, replace = TRUE),
                   q2 = sample(1:5, 10, replace = TRUE),
                   q3 = sample(1:5, 10, replace = TRUE),
                   q4 = sample(1:5, 10, replace = TRUE),
                   q5 = sample(1:5, 10, replace = TRUE))


data[, q1 := set_label(data[, q1], lookup[id == "q1", question])] 

get_label(data$q1)

So I am able to label specific variables if I call them with their id but I am struggling with the task if I want to "loop" through all variables. Tried with a for loop with no success.

The goal is to be able to export the datatable (or dataframe) as an SPSS file. If it works with other packages I would also be happy.

Solution

  • You can use set_label directly on a dataframe.

    library(sjlabelled)

data <- set_label(data, lookup$question[match(names(data), lookup$id)])

get_label(data)
#     q1       q2       q3       q4       q5 
#"qtext1" "qtext2" "qtext3" "qtext4" "qtext5"