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\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage{url}
\title{Creating an R data set from STAR}
\author{Douglas Bates\\Department of Statistics\\University of Wisconsin -- Madison}
\date{April 5, 2005}
\newcommand{\code}[1]{\texttt{\small #1}}
%%\VignetteIndexEntry{Creating an R data set from STAR}
%%\VignetteDepends{lme4}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\begin{abstract}
  A substantial portion of the data from Tennessee's Student Teacher
  Achievement Ratio (STAR) project, a large-scale, four-year study of
  reduced class size, has been made available to the public at
  \url{http://www.heros-inc.org/data.htm}.  We describe the creation
  of an R (\url{http:www.r-project.org}) data set from these data.
\end{abstract}
<<preliminaries,echo=FALSE,results=hide>>=
options(show.signif.stars = FALSE,width=68)
library(Matrix)
library(lme4)
@ 

\section{Introduction}
\label{sec:intro}

The data from the STAR project are available in several different
forms from the web site \url{http://www.heros-inc.org/data.htm}.  The
most convenient form for creation of an R data set is the
tab-delimited text file.  Download and unzip the archive file
\url{http://www.heros-inc.org/text-star.zip} producing two files:
\texttt{readme.txt}, a description of the data, and
\texttt{webstar.txt}, the data themselves.


\section{Reading the data}
\label{sec:reading}

From the data description file we can see that there are 53 columns in
the data set and most of these columns are coded values.  Such columns
should be represented as factors in R but many of these columns will
need to be combined before we can work with them.  We will convert the
first 5 columns to factors and leave the remaining 48 columns as integers.
\begin{Schunk}
\begin{Sinput}
orig <- read.table("webstar.txt", header = TRUE, 
                   colCl = rep(c("factor", "integer"), c(5, 48)))
\end{Sinput}
\end{Schunk}
In the call to \code{read.table} we used an explicit file name for the
data file.  In practice it is often more convenient to use the
\code{file.choose} function which brings up a file chooser panel.
<<datainput,echo=FALSE,results=hide>>=
load("orig.rda")
@

We can check the form of the original data with
<<strorig>>=
str(orig)
@ 


\subsection{Missing value codes}
\label{sec:missval}

All the columns except the first column have missing values present.
Typically the missing value code is \code{"9"} but \code{"99"},
\code{"999"} and \code{"9999"} are also used.  
We convert these to R's missing value code \code{NA} column by column. 
<<missval>>=
mv <- rep("9", 53)
mv[c(4,17,26,34,45)] <- "99"
mv[c(19,20,27,28,35,36,39,40,46:53)] <- "999"
mv[5] <- "9999"
mv[1] <- "999999"
for (i in seq(a = orig)) orig[[i]][orig[[i]] == mv[i]] <- NA
summary(orig[1:5])
@ 

Notice that level \code{"9"} is still present for the \code{SSEX}
variable even after all the observations at that level have been
replaced by the missing value code.  To remove these unused levels
from this and all the other columns, we loop over the columns
selecting all the values but using the optional argument \code{drop = TRUE}.
<<dropunused>>=
for (i in seq(a = orig)) orig[[i]] <- orig[[i]][drop = TRUE]
summary(orig[1:5])
@ 

For convenience we convert the names of the columns to lower case.
<<lcase>>=
names(orig) <- tolower(names(orig))
@ 

\section{Setting factor levels}
\label{sec:factorLevels}

In R the levels of a factor can be given meaningful labels instead of
numeric codes and in most cases this eliminates the need for a
separate codebook.  For example storing the labels of \code{sex} as
\code{"M"} and \code{"F"} makes the coding self-explanatory.  When
used in a model a factor is automatically converted to a set of
``contrasts'' (there is a technical definition of the term
``contrast'' in linear models that is not always fulfilled by these
derived variables) and the corresponding coefficients are given
meaningful names.

When there is a natural ordering of the levels of a factor it can be
created as an ordered factor that will preserve this ordering.

The labels can be set after the factor is created or as part of the
creation of the factor.  Below we will create a ``long form'' of the
data where each row corresponds to a combination of student and
grade.  In doing this we will need to concatenate related columns of
the original data frame.  For example, the columns \code{cltypek},
\code{cltype1}, \code{cltype2} and \code{cltype3} will be concatenated
to form a single column \code{cltype}.  If the coding is consistent
across the grades then it is easiest to concatenate the integer codes
and set the labels on the ``long'' version of the variable.

However there are two groups of variables, \code{hdeg} and
\code{clad}, that are not coded consistently.  In each case the codes
used for kindergarten teachers are different from those used for
teachers of grades 1 to 3 classes.  The codes for kindergarten
teachers are a superset of those for the other teachers but the
numbering is not consistent; a bachelor's degree is coded as 2 for
kindergarten but 1 for the others.  Thus we cannot combine the numeric
values - we must create the labels for each column and then
concatenate the labels and convert to a factor.

<<factorlevels>>=
orig$hdegk <- ordered(orig$hdegk, levels = 1:6,
                      labels = c("ASSOC","BS/BA","MS/MA/MEd","MA+","Ed.S","Ed.D/Ph.D"))
orig$hdeg1 <- ordered(orig$hdeg1, levels = 1:4,
                      labels = c("BS/BA","MS/MA/MEd","Ed.S","Ed.D/Ph.D"))
orig$hdeg2 <- ordered(orig$hdeg2, levels = 1:4,
                     labels = c("BS/BA","MS/MA/MEd","Ed.S","Ed.D/Ph.D"))
orig$hdeg3 <- ordered(orig$hdeg3, levels = 1:4,
                     labels = c("BS/BA","MS/MA/MEd","Ed.S","Ed.D/Ph.D"))
orig$cladk <- factor(orig$cladk, levels = c(1:3,5:8),
                     labels = c("1","2","3","APPR","PROB","NOT","PEND"))
orig$clad1 <- factor(orig$clad1, levels = 1:6,
                     labels = c("NOT","APPR","PROB","1","2","3"))
orig$clad2 <- factor(orig$clad2, levels = 1:6,
                     labels = c("NOT","APPR","PROB","1","2","3"))
orig$clad3 <- factor(orig$clad3, levels = 1:6,
                     labels = c("NOT","APPR","PROB","1","2","3"))
@ 
\section{Creating separate data frames}
\label{sec:separate}

These data are represented in a ``wide'' format where each row
corresponds to a student.  Some of the columns, such as \code{ssex},
are indeed a property of the student; some, such as \code{hdegk} are
properties of teachers; some, such as \code{schtypek} are properties
of schools or classes in schools; and some are unique to a
student/grade combination.  We will create separate frames for each of
these types.

The first 5 columns are student-level data
<<student>>=
student <- orig[1:5]
names(student) <- c("id", "sx", "eth", "birthq", "birthy")
levels(student$sx) <- c("M", "F")
levels(student$eth) <- c("W", "B", "A", "H", "I", "O")
student$birthy <- ordered(student$birthy)
student$birthq <- ordered(paste(student$birthy,student$birthq,sep=":"))
summary(student)
@ 

The other columns refer to a combination of the student and grade.  We
first create an expanded or ``long'' version of the table with a row
for each student/grade combination.  

To create the long version of the table we repeat the student ids four
times and add a column for the grade level.  Related groups of
columns, such as \code{cltypek}, \code{cltype1}, \code{cltype2} and
\code{cltype3}, are concatenated then converted to a factor.  However,
there are two groups, \code{hdeg} and \code{clad}, for which this
approach will not work because these groups are not encoded
consistently.  
<<long>>=
long <- data.frame(id = rep(orig$newid, 4),
                   gr = ordered(rep(c("K", 1:3), each = nrow(orig)),
                                levels = c("K", 1:3)),
                   star = factor(unlist(orig[6:9])),
                   cltype = factor(unlist(orig[10:13])),
                   schtype = factor(unlist(orig[c(14,22,30,38)])),
                   hdeg = ordered(unlist(lapply(orig[c(15,24,32,43)],as.character)),
                                  levels = c("ASSOC","BS/BA","MS/MA/MEd","MA+","Ed.S","Ed.D/Ph.D")),
                   clad = factor(unlist(lapply(orig[c(16,25,33,44)],as.character)),
                                  levels = c("NOT","APPR","PROB","PEND","1","2","3")),
                   exp = unlist(orig[c(17,26,34,45)]),
                   trace = factor(unlist(orig[c(18,23,31,42)]), levels=1:6,
                                  labels=c("W", "B", "A", "H", "I", "O")),
                   read = unlist(orig[c(19,27,35,39)]),
                   math = unlist(orig[c(20,28,36,40)]),
                   ses = factor(unlist(orig[c(21,29,37,41)]),labels=c("F","N")),
                   sch = factor(unlist(orig[50:53])))
@ 

We can now eliminate the combinations that are completely missing.  Checking 
<<summarylong>>=
summary(long)
@ 
indicates that fewest missing values are in the \code{sch},
\code{cltype}, and \code{schtype} columns. They are also consistent
<<isnacheck>>=
with(long, all.equal(is.na(schtype), is.na(sch)))
with(long, all.equal(is.na(cltype), is.na(sch)))
@ 
hence we use these to subset the data frame
<<longsubset>>=
long <- long[!is.na(long$sch),]
@ 

It turns out that we could have used the \code{star} column as this
simply indicates if the student was in the study that year.
<<summlong>>=
summary(long[1:5])
@ 
Because it now contains no information we will drop it.
<<dropstar>>=
long$star <- NULL
@ 

For convenience we set the row names of this data frame to be a combination of the student id and the grade.
<<rownames>>=
rownames(long) <- paste(long$id, long$gr, sep = '/')
@ 

We can extract the school-level data from this table.
<<schooltable>>=
school <- unique(long[, c("sch", "schtype")])
length(levels(school$sch)) == nrow(school)
row.names(school) <- school$sch
school <- school[order(as.integer(as.character(school$sch))),]
long$schtype <- NULL
levels(school$schtype) <- c("inner","suburb","rural","urban")
levels(long$cltype) <- c("small", "reg", "reg+A")
@ 

We can create a merged data set with
<<merging>>=
star <- merge(merge(long, school, by = "sch"), student, by = "id")
star$time <- as.integer(star$gr) - 1
@ 

\section{Assigning teacher ids}
\label{sec:teacher}

There are no teacher id numbers available but we can obtain a
reasonably accurate surrogate by determining the unique combinations
of all the variables associated with the teacher.
<<teacher>>=
teacher <- unique(star[, c("cltype", "trace", "exp", "clad", "gr",
                           "hdeg", "sch")])
teacher <- teacher[with(teacher, order(sch, gr, cltype, exp, hdeg,
                                       clad, trace)), ]
@ 

To generate the correspondence between the observations and the
teacher we create labels that incorporate the levels of each of the
variables that defined the unique combinations.
<<teacherlabels>>=
row.names(teacher) <- tch <- teacher$tch <- seq(nrow(teacher))
names(tch) <- do.call("paste", c(teacher[,1:7], list(sep=":")))
star$tch <- tch[do.call("paste", c(star[c("cltype", "trace", "exp",
                                          "clad", "gr", "hdeg", "sch")],
                                   list(sep = ":")))]
@

We can check if this is successful by generating tables of class sizes.
<<classsizes>>=
table(table(star$tch))
table(table(subset(star, cltype == "small")$tch))
table(table(subset(star, cltype == "reg")$tch))
table(table(subset(star, cltype == "reg+A")$tch))
@ 

We see that there are three classes with sizes greater than 30 and
that one of these is labelled as a ``small'' class.  It is likely that
each of these represents two or more classes but we do not have enough
information to distinguish them.

\section{Initial model fits}
\label{sec:initial}

Some initial model fits are
<<initialModel>>=
library(lme4)
(mm1 <- lmer(math ~ gr + sx + eth + cltype + (1|id) + (1|sch), star))
(rm1 <- lmer(read ~ gr + sx + eth + cltype + (1|id) + (1|sch), star))
@ 
\end{document}