Recoding multiple race variables into a single race variable - r

Question

I'm trying to recode multiple race variables into a single race variable. The different variables are RaceVar1: Asian RaceVar2: AIAN RaceVar3: Black RaceVar4: Native Hawaiian RaceVar5: White. Variables are ticked off with a 1 if participants chose that race, and 0 if they didn't. I would like to create a new race variable that condenses these variables into one, as well as assess for if someone ticked off multiple races.
I am able to do this in SAS however I need to do this in R and am unsure how to perform the same task. SAS code below
data want;
set have;
length race $40;
if sum(of r_s_q61___1 - r_s_q61___5) > 1 then race='More than one race';
else if r_s_q61___2 then race='American Indian or Alaska Native';
else if r_s_q61___1 then race='Asian';
else if r_s_q61___5 then race='White';
else if r_s_q61___3 then race='Black or African American';
else if r_s_q61___4 then race='Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander';
else race='Unknown';
run;
I'm not sure where to start other than I believe maybe using rowSums() and ifthen() within a mutate() statement.

Answer 1

Yep! mutate and ifelse are your friends here. With dplyr though we've also got a neat function called case_when that lets us nest a bunch of ifelse statements simultaneously.
library(dplyr)
data.frame(`RaceVar1`=c(1,0,0,0,0,1),
`RaceVar2`=c(0,1,0,0,0,0),
`RaceVar3`=c(0,0,1,0,0,0),
`RaceVar4`=c(0,0,0,1,0,0),
`RaceVar5`=c(0,0,0,0,1,0),
`RaceVar6`=c(0,0,0,0,0,1)) %>%
mutate(more_than_one=rowSums(.)) %>%
mutate(Race=ifelse(
more_than_one>1,
'More than one race',
case_when(
RaceVar1 == 1 ~ "RaceVar1: Asian",
RaceVar2 == 1 ~ "RaceVar2: AIAN",
RaceVar3 == 1 ~ "RaceVar3: Black",
RaceVar4 == 1 ~ "RaceVar4: Native Hawaiian",
RaceVar5 == 1 ~ "RaceVar5: White"
)
))
RaceVar1 RaceVar2 RaceVar3 RaceVar4 RaceVar5 RaceVar6 more_than_one Race
1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 RaceVar1: Asian
2 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 RaceVar2: AIAN
3 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 RaceVar3: Black
4 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 RaceVar4: Native Hawaiian
5 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 RaceVar5: White
6 1 0 0 0 0 1 2 More than one race