Importing .csv file with tidydata - r

Question

I am having difficulty importing my data in the way I would like to from a .csv file to tidydata.
My data set is made up of descriptive data (age, country, etc.) and then 15 condition columns that I would like to have in just one column (long format). I have previously tried 'melting' the data in a few ways, but it does not turn out the way I intended it to. These are a few things I have tried, I know it is kind of messy. There are quite a few NAs in the data, which seem to be causing an issue. I am trying to create this specific column "Vignette" which will serve as the collective column for the 15 vignette columns I would like in long format.
head(dat)
ID Frequency Gender Country Continent Age
1 5129615189 At least weekly female France Europe 30-50 years
2 5128877943 At least daily female Spain Europe > 50 years
3 5126775994 At least weekly female Spain Europe 30-50 years
4 5126598863 At least daily male Albania Europe 30-50 years
5 5124909744 At least daily female Ireland Europe > 50 years
6 5122047758 At least weekly female Denmark Europe 30-50 years
Practice Specialty Seniority AMS
1 University public hospital centre Infectious diseases 6-10 years Yes
2 Other public hospital Infectious diseases > 10 years Yes
3 University public hospital centre Intensive care > 10 years Yes
4 University public hospital centre Infectious diseases > 10 years No
5 Private hospial/clinic Clinical microbiology > 10 years Yes
6 University public hospital centre Infectious diseases 0-5 years Yes
Durations V01 V02 V03 V04 V05 V06 V07 V08 V09 V10 V11 V12 V13 V14 V15
1 range 7 2 7 7 7 5 7 14 7 42 42 90 7 NA 5
2 range 7 10 10 5 14 5 7 14 10 42 21 42 14 14 14
3 range 7 5 5 7 14 5 5 13 10 42 42 42 5 0 7
4 range 10 7 7 5 7 10 7 5 7 28 14 42 10 10 7
5 range 7 5 7 7 14 7 7 14 10 42 42 90 10 0 7
6 fixed duration 7 3 3 7 10 10 7 14 7 90 90 90 10 7 7
dat_long %>%
gather(Days, Age, -Vignette)
dat$new_sp = NULL
names(dat) <- gsub("new_sp", "", names(dat))
dat_tidy<-melt(
data=dat,
id=0:180,
variable.name="Vignette",
value.name="Days",
na.rm=TRUE
)
dat_tidy<- mutate(dat_tidy,
Days= sub("^V", "", Days)
)
It keeps saying "Error: id variables not found in data: NA"
I have tried to get rid of NAs but it doesn't seem to do anything.

Answer 1

I am guessing you are loading the melt function from reshape2. I will recommend that you try tidyr which is basically the next generation of reshape2.
Your error is presumable that the argument id=0:180. This is basically asking it to keep columns 0-180 as "identifier" columns, and melt the rest (i.e. create a new row for each value in each column).
When you subset more column indices than columns in a data.frame, the non-existing columns are filled in with pure NA - you asked for them, so you get them!
I would recommend loading tidyr, as it is newer. There should be some new verbs in the package that are more intuitive, but I'll give you a solution with the older semantic:
library(tidyr)
dat_tidy <- dat %>% gather('Vignette', 'Days', starts_with('V'))
# or a bit more verbose
dat_tidy <- dat %>% gather('Vignette', 'Days', V01, V02, V03, V04)
And check out the comment #heck1 for asking even better questions.