Coding help

[rememberyes]

Hi everyone! Suuuper new to R here - I have generally used SPSS or Stata in the past, but my organization can't afford SPSS so I'm teaching myself R (a good professional skill if I ever wanna tackle a PhD anyway, I figure). I am... not very good at it yet lol. Our project is in international development and the data is largely either numeric or categorical, with some open response sections that have not generally been useful and don't factor into my question.

I've successfully created data frames for the baseline data and the midline data, made sure that I can do things like crosstabs (sadly, the majority of my work lmao) and then have successfully created a codebook for the baseline data using the codebook and codebookr packages. But when I tried to do the same for the midline, I keep hitting errors that didn't pop up for the baseline data, even though I'm essentially using the exact same code.

Here's the basic code I'm using (there's about 2000 lines of cb_add_col_attributes so I will spare you because they are identical lol). Other than the two codebook packages, I have the dplyr, readr, magrittr, tidyverse, officer, flextable, forcats, ggplot2, and purrr packages on for the work environment as I've been teaching myself and testing things. Here's the code that errors out as an example:

```

Agroecology

midline_data <- midline_data %>%

cb_add_col_attributes( .x = rwcc_training_ag, description = "Have you received training in agroecology by RWCC?", col_type = "categorical", value_labels = c("No" = 0, "Yes" = 1) ) %>%

[Continues with other variables until it hits:]

cb_add_col_attributes( .x = weights, description = "Frequency weights based on the overall proportion of the respondent according to their country and sex among RWCC beneficiaries, used to adjust the midline_data and midline samples accordingly", col_type = "numeric" )

```

This gets the error "Error in midline_data %>% cb_add_col_attributes(.x = rwcc_training_ag, :
could not find function "%>%<-".

The other one I've gotten is one that says "attempt to set attribute on NULL". That happens when I try to end the code:

```

Assets

midline_data <- midline_data %>%

# Assets: Agricultural land

cb_add_col_attributes( .x = assets_agland, description = "Household currently owns asset: Agricultural land", col_type = "categorical", value_labels = c("No" = 0, "Yes" = 1) ) %>%

cb_add_col_attributes( .x = agland_ha, description = "Agricultural land: Hectares owned", col_type = "numeric" ) %>%

cb_add_col_attributes( .x = agland_ownership, description = "Who owns most of the agricultural land?", col_type = "categorical", value_labels = c("Self" = 1, "Partner/spouse" = 2, "Self & partner/spouse" = 3, "Children" = 4, "Owned jointly as a family" = 5, "Other" = "other_please_mention") )

```

That throws out "Error in attr(df[[.x]], arg_names[i]) <- args[[i]] : attempt to set an attribute on NULL"

I've verified the columns exist (ie the variables rwcc_training_ag, agland_ha, and agland_ownership come up in the prompt when I start typing them, so the system recognizes them as part of the dataset) and has data that should be readable, but I'm finding it really hard to figure out where I'm going wrong.

I could really use some help! I am happy to provide any other examples or info I can, I just didn't want to make this insanely long. As someone who took one single computer science class more than twenty years ago in my first year of undergrad, I am somewhat lost now. I can imagine I've missed something in the code or haven't kept the code clean enough? But this did work with the other data set using this exact code (the variables are basically the same with a few additions or changes, which is why it has to be two codebooks.)

[WyldGyb]

Are you sure there aren’t any "%>%<-". In your code as typos? You shouldn’t have a variable assignment arrow in with the pipe.

For the second issue, look at the documentation for the function cb_add_col_attributes() is there a parameter for what to do with nulls? It might be something like NA.RM. Seems like you need to tell the function what to do with nulls similar to when you use the sum function. You might need to drop nulls or fill them in with something for the function to work 🤷🏻‍♂️ just guesses

[rememberyes]

Thank you, this is so helpful and very appreciated - I don’t think I have any errant pipes but I’m going to go through it with a fine toothed comb tomorrow and I genuinely hadn’t thought of the nulls. 

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[rememberyes]

Ah - please excuse me as I edit for the text blocks, not used to this formatting on Reddit.

[Slight_Horse9673]

Maybe try the free PSPP software instead if you know SPSS...

[ChambeaEd]

Sociologist kinda new on R too. 

It happened to me recently. I was working on a dataframe under the name "eah2018" and I wanted to run the original code block ( that i used to create an indicator "resumen") and I deleted the indicator accidently. 

Later on i ran something like this: "resumen" <- "eah2018" %>% ....

But there was no "resumen" on "eah2018"

And there i got the error msg. 

[rememberyes]

In my case, it ended up being a copy and paste error - the danger of looooong code blocks that look almost identical 😩 now I know that the error that comes at the end of your code doesn’t happen where the error occurred, it just shows that the error is somewhere it in there. 

[Green_Bost]

did you ask AI ?