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Create bar plots in ADL's style

Source: R/adl_bar_plots.R
adl_bar_plots.Rd

This function allows users to create different types of bar plots with ADL's style. This a wrapper around geom_col, geom_text/,geom_label, and geom_errorbar. This function was created to standardize the graphs produced by CAR's team and to cut down on the amount of time it takes to make these graphs.

Usage

adl_bar_plots(
  data,
  x,
  y,
  col_label,
  group = NULL,
  fill = NULL,
  direction = "vertical",
  col_text_size = 3.25,
  distance_from_col = 0.25,
  freq_plot = TRUE,
  position = NULL,
  dodge_width = 0.8,
  dodge_reverse = TRUE,
  wrap_facet_labels = 100,
  ...
)

Arguments

data

A dataframe or tibble. This can be piped in like with a normal ggplot function.

x

Variable that goes in the x-axis. This is required.

y

Variable that goes in the y-axis. This is required.

col_label

Variable that provides the values to be used as the labels in the plot. This is what is used in geom_text and geom_label

group

Explicitly set the overall grouping variable. This is used in stacked graphs and dodged graphs. If NULL, the default, no grouping variable is used. Note: No need to set this if the data is not grouped at all.

fill

Set the grouping variable for which the inside of the bars are colored. This is used in stacked graphs and dodged graphs. If NULL, the default, no grouping variable is used. Note: No need to set this if the data is not grouped at all.

direction

A character string indicating the direction of the bars. There are two options:

  1. "vertical", the default, the bars are vertical

  2. "horizontal" the bars are horizontal This must be set explicitly as it affects the location of the text, labels, and error bars.

col_text_size

The size of the text inside/on top of the columns. Default is 3.25. Default for web is 12.

distance_from_col

How far the labels are from the bars in freq plots and how far they are from the bottom of the bar in the mean plots.

freq_plot

Logical. Determines if this is a frequency plot. If TRUE, default, then the graph will be styled as a frequency plot with the bar labels appearing outside the bars. FALSE, the graph will be styled as a mean plot with the labels appearing.

position

A character string determining how the plot handles a grouped graph. By default it is NULL which assumes there is no grouping variable. If you set to "dodge" then you will get a dodged plot. This is best used when comparing two groups, especially when they do not add up to 100. If you set it to "stacked" then you get a stacked plot. This should be used when comparing multiple statements with likert scales and other things that add up to 100.

dodge_width

This adjusts the width in the dodge plot. For more info check out position_dodge.

dodge_reverse

Reverses the order of the bars and text in a dodge plot. For more info check out position_dodge.

wrap_facet_labels

Determine number of characters per line in the labels. Uses label_wrap_gen to wrap the text across multiple lines. If left blank, defaults to 200 so that it in essence won't wrap the text. text

...

Additional arguments passed on to theme_default

Details

As mentioned previously, this function is a wrapper around various {ggplot2} functions in order to save time when making simple bar plots, dodged bar plots, and stacked bar plots. As a result, it is not possible to combine every element of the graph. If you would like to do so, we recommend using the actual geoms from {ggplot2}.

Each of the elements included serve a purpose to allow you to customize the graphs so that they look nice. Moreover, the arguments were created for the types of graphs that CAR produces, namely mean plots and frequency plots.