Reading IPUMS-DHS data into R

1

I am using IPUMS-DHS data for a project, and I think I encountered a potential error when using the R command to import the data into my R session.

ddi <- read_ipums_ddi("ipums_data/idhs_00004.xml")
data <- read_ipums_micro(ddi)

Specifically, when I downloaded variables with high decimal precision, like NDVI, CROPLAND, etc. (e.g. 0.34543), the file stores these values as an integer and all of them are “0”. Even when I try to convert from integer into double, this does not seem to resolve the issue. This may be a user-error on my part, but am wondering if there may be something going on with the underlying function when it stores the NDVI, CROPLAND variables as integers.

Thanks!

2

This is an issue we have come across before and are working to fix. Until then, you should be able to work around the issue by modifying this code:

library(ipumsr)
library(dplyr)

vars_that_should_be_doubles <- c(“NDVI”, “CROPLAND”)

ddi <- read_ipums_ddi("path/to/ddi/filename.xml")
ddi$var_info <- ddi$var_info %>% 
  mutate(
    var_type = if_else(
      var_name %in% vars_that_should_be_doubles),
      "numeric",
      var_type
    )
  )
data <- read_ipums_micro(ddi)