R extract multiple variables from column - r

Question

I'm new to R so my apologies if this is unclear.
My data contains 1,000 observations of 3 variable columns: (a) person, (b) vignette, (c) response. The vignette column contains demographic information presented in a paragraph, including age (20, 80), sex (male, female), employment (employed, not employed, retired), etc. Each person received a vignette that randomly presented one of the values for age (20 or 80), sex (male or female), employment (employed, not employed, retired), etc.
(e.x. Person #1 received: A(n) 20 year old male is unemployed. Person #2 received: A(n) 80 year old female is retired. Person #3 received: A(n) 20 year old male is unemployed... Person # 1,000 received: A(n) 20 year old female is employed.)
I'm trying to use tidyr:extract on (b) vignette to extract the rest of the demographic information and create several new variable columns labeled "age", "sex" "employment" etc. So far, I've only been able to extract "age" using this code:
tidyr::extract(data, vignette, c("age"), "([20:80]+)")
I want to extract all of the demographic information and create variable columns for (b) age, (c) sex, (d) employment, etc. My goal is to have 1,000 observation rows with several variable columns like this:
(a) person, (b) age, (c) sex, (d) employment (e) response
Person #1 20 Male unemployed Very Likely
Person #2 80 Female retired Somewhat Likely
Person #3 20 Male unemployed Very Unlikely
...
Person #1,000 20 Female employed Neither Likely nor Unlikely
Vignette Example:
structure(list(Response_ID = "R_86Tm81WUuyFBZhH", Vignette = "A(n) 18 year-old Hispanic woman uses heroin several times a week. This person is receiving welfare, is employed and has no previous criminal conviction for drug possession. - Based on this description, how likely or unlikely is it that this person has a drug addiction?", Response = "Very Likely"), row.names = c(NA, -1L), class = c("tbl_df", "tbl", "data.frame"))
I appreciate any guidance or help!

Answer 1

I made up some regex's to pull out your info. Experience shows that you're going to spend many hours tweaking the regex before you get anything reasonably satisfactory. E.g. you won't pull the employment status correctly out of a sentence like "Neither she nor her boyfriend are employed"
raw <- structure(list(Response_ID = "R_86Tm81WUuyFBZhH",
Vignette = "A(n) 18 year-old Hispanic woman uses heroin several times a week. This person is receiving welfare, is employed and has no previous criminal conviction for drug possession. - Based on this description, how likely or unlikely is it that this person has a drug addiction?",
Response = "Very Likely"), row.names = c(NA, -1L), class = c("tbl_df", "tbl", "data.frame"))
raw2 <- raw %>%
add_row(Response_ID = "R_xesrew",
Vignette = "A 22 year-old White boy drinks bleach. He is unemployed",
Response = "Unlikely")
rzlt <- raw2 %>%
tidyr::extract(Vignette, "Age", "(?ix) (\\d+) \\s* year\\-old", remove = FALSE) %>%
tidyr::extract(Vignette, "Race", "(?ix) (hispanic|white|asian|black|native \\s* american)", remove = FALSE) %>%
tidyr::extract(Vignette, "Job", "(?ix) (not \\s+ employed|unemployed|employed|jobless)", remove = FALSE) %>%
tidyr::extract(Vignette, "Sex", "(?ix) (female|male|woman|man|boy|girl)", remove = FALSE) %>%
select(- Vignette)
Gives
# A tibble: 2 x 6
Response_ID Sex Job Race Age Response
<chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
1 R_86Tm81WUuyFBZhH woman employed Hispanic 18 Very Likely
2 R_xesrew boy unemployed White 22 Unlikely
Save your work
library(readr)
write_csv(rzlt, "myResponses.csv")
Alternatively
library(openxlsx)
openxlsx::write.xlsx(rzlt, "myResponses.xlsx", asTable = TRUE)