R help - Sep 2003 - problems with categorical variables

Hi All: 

I am working on a dataset of a study on healthcare workers. One of the 
variables I am studying is a categorical variable (variable name:EDUC, 
indicates educational achievement, with 6 levels: "illiterate",
"primary",
"junior high school", "high school completed",
"undergraduate", and
"postgraduate"). 

I want to collapse the 6 levels to a 4-level categorical variable (let's 
call it "educrec", with the following levels:
"postgraduate",
"undergraduate", "some schooling" and
"illiterate").

I initially tried the following code: 

x <- table(EDUC)
educrec <- c(x[1], x[2], (x[3]+x[4]+x[5]), x[6])) 

table(educrec) gives me the tally count just fine, but I cannot use educrec 
in any cross tabulation. 

Would greatly appreciate if you can advise on the correct way to recode 
categorical variables to categorical variables in R.
I use Windows XP (Home), R-version 1.7.1
I looked for solutions in the "introduction to R" and the archives,
but
wasn't successful. 

 -Arin Basu

arinbasu at softhome.net writes:
> Hi All: I am working on a dataset of a study on healthcare workers.
> One of the variables I am studying is a categorical variable (variable
> name:EDUC, indicates educational achievement, with 6 levels:
> "illiterate", "primary", "junior high
school", "high school
> completed", "undergraduate", and "postgraduate").
I want to collapse
> the 6 levels to a 4-level categorical variable (let's call it
> "educrec", with the following levels: "postgraduate",
"undergraduate",
> "some schooling" and "illiterate"). I initially tried
the following
> code: x <- table(EDUC)
> educrec <- c(x[1], x[2], (x[3]+x[4]+x[5]), x[6])) table(educrec) gives
> me the tally count just fine, but I cannot use educrec in any cross
> tabulation. Would greatly appreciate if you can advise on the correct
> way to recode categorical variables to categorical variables in R.
> I use Windows XP (Home), R-version 1.7.1
> I looked for solutions in the "introduction to R" and the
archives,
> but wasn't successful. -Arin Basu
EDUC2 <- EDUC
levels(EDUC2) <- c("postgraduate", 
                   "undergraduate",
                   "some schooling", 
                   "some schooling", 
                   "some schooling", 
                   "illiterate")

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   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
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