userfriendlyscience (version 0.1-2)

scaleInspection: scaleInspection and a number of useful helper functions

Description

scaleInspection is a function to generate a PDF with information to diagnose and inspect scales (aggregate measures); makeScales actually generates the scales; and meanConfInt and sdConfInt provide confidence intervals for means and standard deviations.

Usage

scaleInspection(dat, items = NULL,
                docTitle = "Scale inspection", docAuthor = "Author",
                pdfLaTexPath, rnwPath=getwd(),
                filename = "scaleInspection", convertFactors=TRUE,
                scaleReliability.ci=FALSE, conf.level=.95, digits=2,
                rMatrixColsLandscape = 6,
                pboxWidthMultiplier = 1,
                scatterPlotBaseSize = 4,
                pageMargins=15,
                pval=TRUE)
makeScales(dat, scales)
meanConfInt(vector=NULL, mean=NULL, sd=NULL, n=NULL, se=NULL, conf.level=.95)
sdConfInt(vector=NULL, sd=NULL, n=NULL, conf.level=.95)

Arguments

dat

Dataframe containing the items of the relevant scale

items

Either a character vector with the itemnames, or, if the items are organised in scales, a list of character vectors with the items in each scale.

scales

A list of character vectors with the items in each scale, where each vectors' name is the name of the scale.

docTitle

Title to use when generating the PDF.

docAuthor

Author(s) to include when generating the PDF.

pdfLaTexPath

The path to PdfLaTex. This file is part of a LaTeX installation that creates a pdf out of a .tex file. In Windows, you can download (portable) MikTex from http://miktex.org/portable. You then decide yourself where to install MikTex; pdflatex will end

rnwPath

The path where the temporary files and the resulting PDF should be stored.

filename

The filename to use to save the pdf.

convertFactors

Whether to convert factors to numeric vectors for the analysis.

scaleReliability.ci

TRUE or FALSE: whether to compute confidence intervals for Cronbach's Alpha and Omega (uses bootstrapping function in MBESS, takes a while).

conf.level

Confidence of confidence intervals (for reliability estimates (if requested with scaleReliability.ci), meand, and sd, for respectively scaleInspection, meanConfInt and sdConfInt).

digits

The number of digits to use in the tables.

rMatrixColsLandscape

At how many columns (or rather, variables) or more should rMatrices be printed landscape?

pboxWidthMultiplier

Used for print.rMatrix; used to tweak the width of columns in the correlation matrix.

scatterPlotBaseSize

Size of one scatterplot in the scattermatrix in centimeters. If the total scattermatrix becomes larger than 18 cm, it's scaled down to 18 cm.

pageMargins

Margins of the page in millimeters.

pval

Whether to print p-values as p-values in correlation matrix.

vector

Numeric vector to use when computing confidence intervals.

mean

Mean to use when computing confidence intervals (when no vector is provided).

sd

Standard deviaton to use when computing confidence intervals (when no vector is provided).

n

Number of datapoints to base confidence intervals on.

se

Standard errorto use when computing confidence intervals (when no standard deviation or vector is provided).

Value

• scaleInspection returns nothing; it just generates a PDF. makeScales returns the provided dataframe, now including the new scale variables. meanConfInt and sdConfInt return an object, with in its 'output' list, the confidence interval for a mean or standard deviation.

Details

scaleInspection generates a PDF with useful diagnostics to assess a scale; those from scaleDiagnosis and an rMatrix. makeScales generates the scales and stores them in the dataframe. meanConfInt and sdConfInt just compute and return a confidence interval for a mean or standard deviation.

Examples

scaleInspection(mtcars, items=c('disp', 'hp', 'drat'), pdfLaTexPath="valid/path/here");

newDataframe <- makeScales(mtcars, list(senselessScale = c('disp', 'hp', 'drat')));

sdConfInt(sd=4, n=30);

meanConfInt(mean=5, sd=4, n=30)