Hello All:
I am very new to R and am trying to import some (107) text files into R while
simultaneously manipulating the data into a structure that I can use. Below is
a description of what I am trying to ultimately accomplish. However, I find
that I am unable to even read one file into R using the read.table function. I
get the following error:
> test<-read.table("test4.txt")
Error in scan(file, what, nmax, sep, dec, quote, skip, nlines, na.strings, :
line 16 did not have 8 elements
So, I would like to resolve the error first, and then ultimately accomplish the
goal outlined below. I understand that my ultimate goal may require multiple
steps. I am open to that.
First, a little background: Data were collected from 107 participants on palm
pilots. Participants were randomly beeped 5 times throughout the day for 5
days resulting in a total of 25 measurement occasions. Participants responded
to beeps only when they were able to (not in class, driving, etc). Thus, most
participants completed far less than 25 measurement occasions. During each
measurement occasion participants responded to 32 questions by moving a slider
on a 100 point scale. The palms recorded the date, time, palm pilot ID number,
response to the beep (non-response = -32767), question number, response latency
in milliseconds, response to each question, and three addtiional data points of
no interest. The data are arranged in an unstacked (long) text file such that
each line contains all of the above information and there are 34 (32 responses
plus 2 extra lines of meaningless data) lines per measurement occasion (upto
850 lines of data if all 34 lines are present !
for all 25 measurment occasions). Below is an example of how the data are
arranged.
20080204131646 2 32 560 63 6 0 ""
20080204131646 2 33 152 -1 7 0 ""
20080204150043 2 -32767 0 9999 0 65535 ""
20080204182117 2 1 283 -1 7 0 ""
20080204182117 2 2 838 34 6 0 ""
20080204182117 2 3 266 36 6 0 ""
Year/Month/Day/Time Palm ID Response/Q# Latency Response 3 meangingless
columns The dataset presented above begins with question 32 of one
measurement occasion on Febraury 4, 2008 taken at 13:16:46. The next line (33)
is in the datafile because participants had to click a button to exit the
measurement occasion. You then see the beginning of another measurement
occasion (20080204192117) in which the participant did not respond (-32767).
The next measurement occasion begins on the next line which actually starts
with response 2 because participants were required to read a screen and click
through prior to answering any questions. Thus, anytime participants simply
read an instruction page responses are coded as a -1. What I would like to do
is write code to automatically import these 107 files into R and structure them
appropriately while importing them. Furthermore, I would like for the code to
use conditional statements so that whenever it encounters a -32767!
it inserts 32 variables (columns) with missing data and whenever it
encounters a -1 it deletes that column all together. I would also like the
code to separate the combined year/month/day/time column into 4 separate
columns (year, month, day, time). Finally, I would like the code to stack the
32 responses during each measurement occasion so that I have 32 columns of
reponses plus columns for year, month, day, and latency, but leave each
measurment occasion unstacked.
Thanks!
Eric S McKibben
Industrial-Organizational Psychology Graduate Student
Clemson University
Clemson, SC
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