LongName

This module can be used to convert codes to long names from the HMIS dataset

What is HMIS?

HMIS (Homeless Management Information System) is software application that records all housing services provided to individuals and families seeking federally funded homelessness assistance. HMIS stores client-level data and data on the provision of housing and services to homeless individuals and families and persons at risk of homelessness and must comply with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) data collection, management, and reporting standards.

What does this module do?

HMIS Datasets often contain a lot of column that are encoded using identifiers. To understand the meaning of a particular value, one has to look it up in the HMIS data dictionary. For example, Enrollment.csv contains a column called 'Length of Stay' which takes nine possible values as follows:

addLongName function

With multiple columns being encoded with some of them taking 35+ possible values, it is difficult to remember what each value represents.addLongName function will insert a column looking up its value from the data dictionary and insert it next to the column you passed. Returns a DataFrame with additional LongName column

Parameters:

df : DataFrame of interest

col: columnn whose long name is to be appended to the DataFrame

Returns:

df : DataFrame with new column inserted at (location of) column + 1 index

How to invoke the function?

You can invoke the function by importing the file and calling the function as showing in the image below

Currently the module supports following columns -

LivingSituation

Destination

DisabilityType

ProjectType

HousingType

HouseholdType

GeographyType

Ethnicity

Gender

LengthOfStay

TimesHomelessPastThreeYears

MonthsHomelessPastThreeYears