On 26/10/2015 6:24 AM, Lorenz, Jennifer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a question regarding the creation of new variables on the basis of
> existing ones in R.
>
> I have two variables containing information on parents' educational degree
> (e.g. 1 'high school degree', 2 'college degree', etc.). I would like to
> create a new variable for 'parents' highest educational degree', i.e. if
> variable1 (father's degree) is higher than variable2 (mother's degree) than
> the new variable (variable3) should take on the value of variable1, if not,
> than variable3 should take on the value of variable2.
>
> I usually use SPSS for data manipulation, there I would code variable3 as
> follows:
> COMPUTE variable3= 0.
> IF variable1 > variable2 variable3= variable1.
> IF variable1 <= variable2 variable3= variable2.
>
> The closest I came to that in R was with this code:
> data$variable3 <- 0
> data$variable3[data$variable1 > data$variable2]<-data$variable1
> data$variable3[data$variable1 <= data$variable2]<-data$variable2
>
> I also tried:
> data$variable3 <- ifelse(data$variable1 > data$variable2), data$variable1,
> data$variable2)
>
> Both didn't work.
>
> I am not sure if my post is at all understandable (this is my first time
> posting on R-help), but I am really hoping for some advice!
This is a good place to use the ifelse() function:
data$variable3 <- ifelse(data$variable1 > data$variable2,
data$variable1, data$variable2)
Duncan Murdoch
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