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I am running into a bit of a wall using the gather() and unite() functions from tidyr.

This example is the intended output

# sample Data
> wide_df 
    col A   B  C 
1   X   1   2  3 
2   Y   4   5  6

> gather(wide_df, my_key, my_val, -col)
  col my_key my_val
1  X   A      1 
2  Y   A      4 
3  X   B      2 
4  Y   B      5 
5  X   C      3 
6  Y   C      6

However, using my actual data, I get a different result.

# Actual Data
>Parents_Pulse_Survey
    col         Too_demanding       Cost_Too_High   Prefer_Stay_ParentHome
1   Austin     NA                   NA             Prefer_Stay_ParentHome
2   Austin     Too_demanding        NA                 NA

reasons <-gather(Austin_Parent_Pulse_Survey, reasonsWhy,High_Childcare_Cost:Other_Stay_At_Home)

Then I get this output 

reasons
# A tibble: 30,900 x 2
   reasonsWhy `High_Childcare_Cost:Other_Stay_At_Home`
   <chr>      <chr>                                   
 1 Austin     Yes                                     
 2 Austin     Yes                                     
 3 Austin     Yes                                     
 4 Austin     Yes                                     
 5 Austin     Yes                                     
 6 Austin     Yes

What am I doing wrong?

I want my actual output to look like the sample output. Your help is greatly appreciated.

I would like to get this type of output

# Intended Output
reasons         
   Respondent      Reasons                                   
 1 Austin          High_Childcare_Cost                                    
 2 Austin          Other_Stay_At_Home                                    
 3 Austin          Too_demanding                                     
 4 Austin          Too_demanding                                     
 5 Austin         High_Childcare_Cost                                      
 6 Austin         Other_Stay_At_Home
alistaire
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Luis
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    Your second `gather` comment doesn't make much sense, nor does your actual data table. What is your expected output based on the actual data table? – Maurits Evers Aug 11 '18 at 16:08
  • my data does not look reproducible anymore. just added my intended output. not sure what happened. – Luis Aug 11 '18 at 16:19

1 Answers1

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You have to put how you call (database, attribute_name, value_variable_name, columns you collect), looks like you miss to name value_variable_name. Below is example based on iris

 str(iris)
 reasons <- gather(iris, 
                   reasonsWhy, Value,
                   Sepal.Length:Petal.Width)
Nar
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  • thank you. I used your code and adjusted it for my data. I get this error reasons Error in make.names(x) : invalid multibyte string 1. Is it because this was a select all that apply questions? Meaning that respondents could choose more than one answer. – Luis Aug 11 '18 at 16:24
  • most probably you have columns with the same name which generate this error – Nar Aug 11 '18 at 17:09