For a researcher, data is a valuable resource - especially if you have gone to the time and expense of collecting it yourself. Assembling datasets from your experiments is a crucial step towards answering your research questions. A well-constructed dataset makes analysis easier and increases the future utility of your data. This workshop will cover the nuts and bolts of assembling a dataset - a topic relevant to students and experienced researchers alike. Using relevant R functions and packages we will look at how to avoid common pitfalls, and how to implement assertive data validation to keep your data shipshape.
If you would like to follow along with the workshop's code please download this repository by clicking the green code button above and select download zip. Unzip this file and dbl-click on the data_workshop_code.Rproj file to load it in RStudio. You will also need to download both the assertr and dataspice packages, see below.
A recording of this workshop has been taken and can be found here.
Demonstration of the assertr package for data validation.
Demonstration of the dataspice package for quick and easy creation of lightweight metadata.
Note: The dataspice package must be installed from GitHub, so you'll need to first install the devtools package:
#install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("ropenscilabs/dataspice")See the dataspice GitHub repository for more information.