dusadrian / ddiwr Goto Github PK

Congratulations and many thanks for this great tool @dusadrian !
I undestand how to use the convert function to produce DDI files with a one to one correspondence between source files (in Stata for instance) and xml files. But I can't figure out how to consolidate it. Here is one reproducible example using the survy models proposed by DHS:

# Install the latest version of DDIwR
remotes::install_github("https://github.com/dusadrian/DDIwR")
library(DDIwR)
library(tidyverse)

# Set our variables to acquire the data
dhs_dir <- "test/"
dhs_models <- c("zzbr62dt.zip", # Births Recode
                "zzcr61dt.zip", # Couples' Recode
                "zzhr62dt.zip", # Household Recode
                "zzir62.zip") # Individual Recode
dhs_base_url <- "https://www.dhsprogram.com/data/model_data/dhs/"

# Acquire the data
dir.create(dhs_dir)
dhs_urls <- paste0(dhs_base_url, dhs_models)
dhs_dest <- paste0(dhs_dir, dhs_models)
map2(dhs_urls, dhs_dest, download.file) # Download
map(dhs_dest, unzip, exdir = dhs_dir) # Unzip
stata_files <- list.files(dhs_dir, pattern = "\\.DTA$") # List data files

Here I have 4 stata files that correspond to different questionnaire sections or different formatting of the same data. I would like to make a consolidated DDI file out of them. Here are two questions:
How can I use DDIwR to convert them to children of a parent common object?
How can use DDIwR to add general metadata to document the Overview, scope & coverage, sampling... and other attributes common to all the files?
Thanks in advance for your feedback.

Hi, thank you for the useful package.

It is stated in the DDI website that DDIwR is used to "create, edit and validate a DDI Codebook version 2.6, using R script commands.". However, in the package documentation it is hard to find references on which DDI versions the package actually supports.

In getDNS() function in internals.R the package seems to look for version 2.5, otherwise it throws an error:

This was a problem when a certain data repository was still using DDI 2.0, which is valid DDI but not recognised as such by the package. However, it is reasonable that the package supports only DDI 2.5, I just wish the package was more transparent about it.

In DDI_Codebook_2.6.R DDIC object is defined, which is used in checkXMList() function in internals.R:

When I tried to use getMetadata() function on a DDI-C 2.5 file it threw and error on lines 280-284 because the check does not accept p and extLink fields in my file although they are 2.5 namespace. However, at least in the case of ExtLink there is a deprecation note in the R-file:

However, when I commented this check out the getMetadata() function seemed to produce a sensible result without errors. Also with DDI Codebook 2.6 still being in draft phase (?) this check seems to be too stringent - or that the package only supports version 2.6 could be communicated to the end user more explicitly.

Hi, I think that we are working on very similar issues, and solving similar problems. Do you think somehow we could harmonize the retroharmonize package and DDIwR?

Hi is there a get started guide for this package or do you recommend just using the StatConverter package?

(we want to generate a DDI codebook from our data for submission to ICPSR)

Thanks!