dealing with strings of data

[clbm]

WARNING: I am a R NEWBIE!!

I have an item on my survey that respondents could, “choose all that apply”.

Here’s the setup:
Q38. Do have a degree in a science field? 0=No, 1=Yes
Q39. Which of the following best describes your science major? If you had multiple majors, please indicate those. There are 8 choices:

1. Astronomy
2. Atmospheric Sciences
3. Biology
4. Chemistry
5. Geology
6. Ocean sciences
7. Physical geography
8. Physics

This created a string of numbers in some cases. I would like to create a new variable that I will call Degree that will have three values:
0. No science degree (picks up the 0 in Q38)

1. Non-Earth Science degree (combines 3. Biology, 4. Chemistry, and 8. Physics)
2. Earth Science degree (combines 1. Astronomy, 2. Atmospheric Sciences, 5. Geology, 6. Ocean Sciences, and 7. Physical Geography)

Does anyone have any tricks up your sleeve in accomplishing such a feat?

[williaml]

Hi, possibly something like case_when():

A general vectorised if — case_when

It would be good if you could provide a reproducible example though.

FAQ: How to do a minimal reproducible example ( reprex ) for beginners

A minimal reproducible example consists of the following items: A minimal dataset, necessary to reproduce the issue The minimal runnable code necessary to reproduce the issue, which can be run on the given dataset, and including the necessary information on the used packages. Let's quickly go over each one of these with examples: Minimal Dataset (Sample Data) You need to provide a data frame that is small enough to be (reasonably) pasted on a post, but big enough to reproduce your issue. Let's say, as an example, that you are working with the iris data frame head(iris) #> Sepal.Length Sepal.Width Petal.Length Petal.Width Species #> 1 5.1 3.5 1.4 0.…