How to reorder Likert responses in plot

[kjd]

Hi RStudio Community,

Stuck on something and would appreciate any help.

Reading in a csv with 25 columns of Likert-type answers. The range of responses are: "Strongly Disagree","Disagree","Neutral","Agree", "Strongly Agree".

Likert plot looks like this:

My problem is with the ordering of the responses. It is alphabetic. I want to reorder it so that it matches the sequence above.

I have tried factoring the levels in my created Likert object, hr, using the following before plotting, but it has no effect on the order. Same plot is produced.

hr$levels <- factor(hr$levels, levels=c("Strongly Disagree","Disagree","Neutral","Agree", "Strongly Agree"),
                  ordered = T)

Can anyone shed some light on this frustrating problem? What I'm missing? I don't have much more hair to pull out.
Very appreciative of any suggestions.
Thanks everyone.
Kjd

[andresrcs]

Hi!

To help us help you, could you please prepare a reproducible example (reprex) illustrating your issue? Please have a look at this guide, to see how to create one:

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.…

[kjd]

Sure.
Here is a sample with comments.

# Here I run the following to read in my survey data
# itemshr <- read.csv("HR Survery Project - Likert.csv")

library(dplyr)
library(likert)

# Here is a simulation:
itemshr <- data.frame(stringsAsFactors = F,
                      Q2_1 = c("Strongly agree","Disagree","Neutral","Agree", "Strongly disagree"),
                      Q2_2 = c("Strongly disagree","Disagree","Neutral","Agree", "Strongly agree"),
                      Q2_3 = c("Neutral","Disagree","Strongly disagree","Agree", "Strongly agree"))

itemshr1 <- itemshr %>%
  mutate_if(is.character, as.factor)

names(itemshr1) <- c(
  Q2_1="I like my job",
  Q2_2="I feel confident in my job",
  Q2_3=" I would recommend my company")

hr <- as.data.frame(itemshr1)
hr <- likert(itemshr1)

# Viewing hr shows the Response order alphabetically
hr

# And here is the Likter plot, showing the same
plot(hr)

#I try to reorder the Response with the following, but it has no affect.
#I place this line after running hr <- likert(itemshr1).
hr$levels <- factor(hr$levels, levels=c("Strongly Disagree","Disagree","Neutral","Agree", "Strongly Agree"),
                    ordered = T)

#No difference to the Response order in the plot.
#I'm trying to place the disagree responses together, then neutral, then the agree responses together. 
#But I'm missing something because it doesn't change.
plot(hr)

[EconProf]

Probably not the simplest solution, but I just created a function to set the levels in the correct order and applied it to each variable. I did not install the likert package to see if the plot is now correct.

library(dplyr)
#> 
#> Attaching package: 'dplyr'
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:stats':
#> 
#>     filter, lag
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
#> 
#>     intersect, setdiff, setequal, union

# Here is a simulation:
itemshr <- data.frame(stringsAsFactors = F,
                      Q2_1 = c("Strongly agree","Disagree","Neutral","Agree", "Strongly disagree"),
                      Q2_2 = c("Strongly disagree","Disagree","Neutral","Agree", "Strongly agree"),
                      Q2_3 = c("Neutral","Disagree","Strongly disagree","Agree", "Strongly agree"))

factor_likert <- function(x){
  factor(x, levels = c("Strongly disagree", "Disagree", "Neutral", "Agree", "Strongly agree"))
}

itemshr1 <- itemshr %>%
  mutate(across(everything(), factor_likert))

str(itemshr1)
#> 'data.frame':    5 obs. of  3 variables:
#>  $ Q2_1: Factor w/ 5 levels "Strongly disagree",..: 5 2 3 4 1
#>  $ Q2_2: Factor w/ 5 levels "Strongly disagree",..: 1 2 3 4 5
#>  $ Q2_3: Factor w/ 5 levels "Strongly disagree",..: 3 2 1 4 5

^{Created on 2022-05-07 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)}

[EconProf]

A lambda function is simpler than defining a separate function:

library(dplyr)

# Here is a simulation:
itemshr <- data.frame(stringsAsFactors = F,
                      Q2_1 = c("Strongly agree","Disagree","Neutral","Agree", "Strongly disagree"),
                      Q2_2 = c("Strongly disagree","Disagree","Neutral","Agree", "Strongly agree"),
                      Q2_3 = c("Neutral","Disagree","Strongly disagree","Agree", "Strongly agree"))

itemshr1 <- itemshr %>%
  mutate(across(1:3, ~ factor(.x, levels = c("Strongly disagree", "Disagree", "Neutral", "Agree", "Strongly agree"))))

itemshr1
#>                Q2_1              Q2_2              Q2_3
#> 1    Strongly agree Strongly disagree           Neutral
#> 2          Disagree          Disagree          Disagree
#> 3           Neutral           Neutral Strongly disagree
#> 4             Agree             Agree             Agree
#> 5 Strongly disagree    Strongly agree    Strongly agree

^{Created on 2022-05-07 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)}

[kjd]

@EconProf

itemshr1 <- itemshr %>%
  mutate(across(1:3, ~ factor(.x, levels = c("Strongly disagree", "Disagree", "Neutral", "Agree", "Strongly agree"))))

Thank you so much for such an expert solution, EconProf. I tried and tried but couldn't see it. Works like a charm. Brilliant. Really appreciate it. KJD.