Label variables in R using a vector

Question

I have a vector like the following

label_names<-c("A","B","C")

I also have the following data.frame

df<- data.frame(var1=1:5,var2=1:5, var3=1:5)

What I want to do is to assign label_names to my df. Then I want to write the data.frame as .dta file to read the labelled data in Stata. Please notice that the original vector I have is larger than this, so I need a general solution.

Answer 1

In my limited experience, R does not use labels as often as Stata. Still you can do it. You need two packages: expss and haven:

In r, use expss::apply_labels to assign variable labels and value labels. I only use variable labels for the purpose of demonstration:

df <- data.frame(year = c(2017, 2018, 2019), 
                 age = c(25, 30, 40), 
                 bmi = c(23.2, 28.3, 32))
# assign labels in r 
df  = expss::apply_labels(df, 
                   year = "Survey year",
                   age = "Age, years",
                   bmi = "BMI, kg/m2"
  )
# export to Stata
haven::write_dta(df, "havenstata.dta")

In Stata, you can check:

. des

Contains data from C:\...\havenstata.dta
  obs:             3                          
 vars:             3                          24 Dec 2019 22:17
 size:            72                          
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              storage   display    value
variable name   type    format     label      variable label
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
year            double  %10.0g                Survey year
age             double  %10.0g                Age, years
bmi             double  %10.0g                BMI, kg/m2
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorted by: 

Although there are some solutions, I think it might be easier to label data in Stata after exported to Stata.