Data cleaning: agreggate similar fields in one

Question

how can I group elements of a variable by common patterns. for example I have a database in which there is a field called company role and I would like to be able to group the common roles into one.

employee <- c("a", "b", "c", "d", "e")
Rol      <- c(" accounting assistant", "accou assist", "account.assistant", 
              "healt aux", "auxiliary in healt")
DF <- data.frame(employee, Rol)

I would like to transform it into something like this

Employeee	ROL
A	accounting assistant
B	accounting assistant
C	accounting assistant
D	Healt auxiliary
E	Healt auxiliary

At the moment i'm manually indentifying the patterns but as the data grows the task becomes more complex, i'd appreciate any help. Thanks!

Answer 1

library(dplyr)
# your dataframe
employee <- c("a", "b", "c", "d", "e")
Rol      <- c(" accounting assistant", "accou assist", "account.assistant", 
              "healt aux", "auxiliary in healt")
DF <- data.frame(employee, Rol)

# save the terms you want to unify in vectors
vector_accounting <- c(" accounting assistant", "accou assist", "account.assistant")
vector_healt <- c("healt aux", "auxiliary in healt")

# apply changes with %in%
DF1 <- DF %>% 
  mutate(Rol = case_when(Rol %in% vector_accounting ~ "accounting assistent",
                         Rol %in% vector_healt ~ "Heat auxiliary"))