Academic data, just like every other data set, usually consumes more time with cleaning and reshaping than analyzing and visualizing. One of the appeals of R is the ability to re-use code and it is in that spirit that I’ve written the following function – to make my life (and hopefully the lives of a few other education researcher s) a little easier with basic re-coding tasks.

IEPs are a common category for grouping records and in EQAO records they reside in separate columns.  The following function works with any dataframe that contains all of the SIF columns (works with both Primary and Junior records): IEP.EQAO(dataframe)

The dataframe is returned with a new column that identifies, in plain language, the IEP that was assigned to each record.

IEP.EQAO <- function(x){
 x$IEP <- paste0(x$SIF_IEP, 
 x$SIF_IPRC_Behaviour,
 x$SIF_IPRC_Autism,
 x$SIF_IPRC_Deaf,
 x$SIF_IPRC_Language,
 x$SIF_IPRC_Speech,
 x$SIF_IPRC_Learning,
 x$SIF_IPRC_Giftedness, 
 x$SIF_IPRC_MildIntellectual,
 x$SIF_IPRC_Developmental,
 x$SIF_IPRC_Physical,
 x$SIF_IPRC_Blind,
 x$SIF_IPRC_Multiple)
 
x$IEP <- ifelse(x$IEP == "0000000000000", "No IEP",
          ifelse(x$IEP == "1000000000000", "IEP no IPRC",
           ifelse(x$IEP == "1100000000000", "Behaviour",
            ifelse(x$IEP == "1010000000000", "Autism",
             ifelse(x$IEP == "1001000000000", "Deaf",
              ifelse(x$IEP == "1000100000000", "Language",
               ifelse(x$IEP == "1000010000000", "Speech",
                ifelse(x$IEP == "1000001000000","Learning",
                 ifelse(x$IEP == "1000000100000","Giftedness",
                  ifelse(x$IEP == "1000000010000","MildIntellectual",
                   ifelse(x$IEP == "1000000001000","Developmental",
                    ifelse(x$IEP == "1000000000100","Physical",
                     ifelse(x$IEP == "1000000000010","Blind",
                      ifelse(x$IEP == "1000000000001","Multiple","BadCode")
                     )
                    )
                   )
                  )
                 )
                )
               )
              )
             )
            )
           )
          )
         )
 return(x) 
}

The code is also available on Github here and is the beginning of what I hope will collaboratively evolve into an EQAO Package.

Future development will include re-coding for Secondary data files. Any comments or interest in collaboration are always welcome.

*Update May 29: Code has been modified to work with any ISD file (3,6,9,10) going back to 2011.