DDI with R
This is a package to collect data and metadata from a variety of sources, and convert those into some of the most popular statistical packages: Stata, SAS, SPSS, and naturally R.
The biggest strength of this package is its ability to convert to and from a DDI (Data Documentation Initiative) Codebook.
The problem of the missing values is was a recurrent one in
R, with various solutions having been implemented in various places. The
base package offers a single (empty, undeclared) type of missing value,
the NA.
In many sciences, however, there are multiple reasons for missing
values, and those are not covered by the NA.
A dedicated package was written to solve this, called
declared,
which is used by DDIwR.
Package DDIwR benefits from a cross-platform GUI called StatConverter. It is similar to a popular commercial software, but built on top of R.
Windows users can already download the setup installer (including R, embedded in the application), or download a .zip file containing all application files to start the application without installing it. More versions for different other operating systems will soon be added.