Retrieve value labels of labelled data

Description

This function returns the value labels of labelled data.

Usage

get_labels(x, attr.only = FALSE, include.values = NULL,
  include.non.labelled = FALSE, drop.na = TRUE, drop.unused = FALSE)

Arguments

Details

This package can add (and read) value and variable labels either in foreign package style (attributes are named value.labels and variable.label) or in haven package style (attributes are named labels and label). By default, the haven package style is used.

Working with labelled data is a key feature of the sjPlot package, which accesses these attributes to automatically read label attributes for labelling axis categories and titles or table rows and columns in graphical or tabular outputs.

When working with labelled data, you can, e.g., use get_label or get_labels to get a vector of value and variable labels, which can then be used with other functions like barplot etc. See 'Examples'. Furthermore, value and variable labels are used when saving data, e.g. to SPSS (see write_spss), which means that the written SPSS file contains proper labels for each variable.

Value

Either a list with all value labels from all variables if x is a data.frame or list; a string with the value labels, if x is a variable; or NULL if no value label attribute was found.

Note

This function works with vectors that have value and variable label attributes (as provided, for instance, by labelled objects). Adding label attributes is automatically done when importing data sets with the read_spss, read_sas or read_stata functions. Labels can also manually be added using the set_labels and set_label functions. If vectors do not have label attributes, either factor-levels or the numeric values of the vector are returned as labels.

Most functions of the sjPlot package make use of value and variable labels to automatically label axes, legend or title labels in plots (sjp.-functions) respectively column or row headers in table outputs (sjt.-functions).

See Also

See vignette Labelled Data and the sjlabelled-Package for more details; set_labels to manually set value labels, get_label to get variable labels and get_values to retrieve the values associated with value labels.

Examples

# import SPSS data set
# mydat <- read_spss("my_spss_data.sav")

# retrieve variable labels
# mydat.var <- get_label(mydat)

# retrieve value labels
# mydat.val <- get_labels(mydat)

data(efc)
get_labels(efc$e42dep)

# simple barplot
barplot(table(efc$e42dep))
# get value labels to annotate barplot
barplot(table(efc$e42dep),
        names.arg = get_labels(efc$e42dep),
        main = get_label(efc$e42dep))

# include associated values
get_labels(efc$e42dep, include.values = "as.name")

# include associated values
get_labels(efc$e42dep, include.values = "as.prefix")

# get labels from multiple variables
get_labels(list(efc$e42dep, efc$e16sex, efc$e15relat))


# create a dummy factor
f1 <- factor(c("hi", "low", "mid"))
# search for label attributes only
get_labels(f1, attr.only = TRUE)
# search for factor levels as well
get_labels(f1)

# same for character vectors
c1 <- c("higher", "lower", "mid")
# search for label attributes only
get_labels(c1, attr.only = TRUE)
# search for string values as well
get_labels(c1)


# create vector
x <- c(1, 2, 3, 2, 4, NA)
# add less labels than values
x <- set_labels(x, labels = c("yes", "maybe", "no"), force.values = FALSE)
# get labels for labelled values only
get_labels(x)
# get labels for all values
get_labels(x, include.non.labelled = TRUE)


# get labels, including tagged NA values
library(haven)
x <- labelled(c(1:3, tagged_na("a", "c", "z"), 4:1),
              c("Agreement" = 1, "Disagreement" = 4, "First" = tagged_na("c"),
                "Refused" = tagged_na("a"), "Not home" = tagged_na("z")))
# get current NA values
x
get_labels(x, include.values = "n", drop.na = FALSE)


# create vector with unused labels
data(efc)
efc$e42dep <- set_labels(
  efc$e42dep,
  labels = c("independent" = 1, "dependent" = 4, "not used" = 5)
)
get_labels(efc$e42dep)
get_labels(efc$e42dep, drop.unused = TRUE)
get_labels(efc$e42dep, include.non.labelled = TRUE, drop.unused = TRUE)