Establishing counts within inconsistent character strings in R?

user_12190288 0
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I have a dataset that has survey respondents click an "all that apply" option for their preferences, and returns each option selected as one character string separated by commas.

So, some example responses might be:

  • "Networking, Journals, Social Media Groups"
  • "Journals"
  • "Networking, Social Media Groups"
  • "Networking, Journals"

Is there a way to efficiently get a count for each sub-string that appear within the column? The desired output would be

 "Networking: 4"
 "Journals: 3"
 "Social Media Groups: 2"
r string
3 Answers

Data

df <- structure(list(string = c("Networking, Journals, Social Media Groups","Journals", "Networking, Social Media Groups", "Networking, Journals")), row.names = c(NA, -4L), class = c("tbl_df", "tbl", "data.frame"))


# A tibble: 4 x 1
  string                                   
  <chr>                                    
1 Networking, Journals, Social Media Groups
2 Journals                                 
3 Networking, Social Media Groups          
4 Networking, Journals

Code

library(tidyverse)

df %>% 
  separate_rows(string,sep = ", ") %>% 
  count(string)

# A tibble: 3 x 2
  string                  n
  <chr>               <int>
1 Journals                3
2 Networking              3
3 Social Media Groups     2
user_96960370

Here is a tidyverse alternative:

library(tidyverse)
df %>% 
    mutate(string = strsplit(as.character(string), ",")) %>% 
    unnest(string) %>% 
    count(String = str_trim(string))

String                  n
  <chr>               <int>
1 Journals                3
2 Networking              3
3 Social Media Groups     2

data:

df <- structure(list(string = c("Networking, Journals, Social Media Groups", 
"Journals", "Networking, Social Media Groups", "Networking, Journals"
)), row.names = c(NA, -4L), class = c("tbl_df", "tbl", "data.frame"
))
user_133216470

We can use base R

table(unlist(strsplit(df$string, ",\\s+")))

-output

            Journals          Networking Social Media Groups 
                  3                   3                   2

data

df <- structure(list(string = c("Networking, Journals, Social Media Groups", 
"Journals", "Networking, Social Media Groups", "Networking, Journals"
)), row.names = c(NA, -4L), class = c("tbl_df", "tbl", "data.frame"
))```
user_37322710
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