The ess package

The philosophy of the ess package is very simple

It fits with the general idea of obtaining data within R from packages such as:

• OECD
• World Bank
• Eurostat

For a very cool compendium of 'data packages' see the series of posts by my good friend Ilya Kashnitsky

It aims to fix four broad problems:

• It's often difficult to keep track of all country/rounds/themes available in the ESS

• It's even trickier to find which countries participated in which rounds

• It's cumbersome to download/redownload data to search for variables

• Avoid leaving your 'analysis phase' to search for information

Requirements:

• Internet connection

• Registered user at http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/user/new

There two family of functions

• ess_* functions download data
  
  • Always return a list

• show_* functions retrieve information from the ess website
  • Always return information as vectors

• show_rounds() returns the rounds available in the ess website

• ess_rounds() downloads the rounds available in the ess website
  • ess_rounds(4:5, "your@email.com")

• ess_all_rounds() downloads all rounds available by default
  • ess_all_rounds("your@email.com")

• show_country() returns the countries available that participated in at least one wave

• show_country_rounds() returns the rounds for which a country participated in

• ess_country() downloads specific rounds for a given country
  • ess_country("Spain", 1:2, "your@email.com")

• ess_all_cntrounds() downloads all available rounds for a given country
  • ess_all_cntrounds("Spain", "your@email.com")

• show_themes() and it's family

• Download ess_* for the SDDF data

• Download the data also in SPSS format

• Develop a complementary package to interact with the codebook and survey analyze the ESS data

• Add your requests/feedback!

  • devtools::install_github("cimentadaj/ess")

• Brief tutorial of the package
• The development repository; this is where I will be developing new features
• Bugs/issues/requests should be added here
• Follow #rstats and @cimentadaj on Twitter to hear about new releases