Merge two survey waves — merge

This function merges a new survey wave into an old one while preserving variable labels and allowing flexible control over which variables are retained.

It provides two options for which variables to retain:

"New and shared old" (default): keeps all variables from the new dataset, plus shared variables from the old dataset, and any additional old-only variables specified in keep_old.
"All": keeps all variables from both datasets.

Variable labels are reapplied after merging:

For variables present in the new dataset, labels are taken from new_data.
For old-only variables (when included), labels are taken from old_data.

Usage

merge_waves(
  new_data,
  old_data,
  vars = c("New and shared old", "All"),
  keep_old = NULL
)

Arguments

new_data: A data frame for the new wave.
old_data: A data frame for the old wave.
vars: Character string, either "New and shared old" (default) or "All".
keep_old: (Optional) character vector of old-only variables to keep when vars = "New and shared old".

Value

A merged data frame with harmonized variable labels.

Examples

# Merge new data and shared variables from old data
merged_data <- merge_waves(new_data = new_data, old_data = old_data, vars = "New and shared old")
#> Error: These packages are required but not installed: dplyr