Data Formatting & Standardisation

Background

In order to apply the GCRMN data standards, there are several R skills required for ensuring that dates and character strings (e.g. monitoring site names) are in the same format and can be joined to comparable monitoring data. Being able to readily place your data into long or wide formats will also help in managing data for summarising and visualising.

This module aims to provide training for basic data formatting skills and how clean formatted data can be saved as intermediate data objects in R. These intermediate data objects can then form the basis for further data aggregation tasks and visualisations of coral reef monitoring data.

Completing the training materials for this module should take approximately ~120 minutes.

Training resources

• Introduction to data formatting and standardisation module

• GCRMN data tier model

• Data imports and standardisation

• Exercises in formatting dates and taxa with tidy and lubridate

• Linking tables with left_join

• Getting data into long format with gather

• Factors with forcats

• Standardising character strings

• Managing intermediate *.rda data objects

• Homework for DFaS Module

• Consolidation and discussion for DFaS Module

• Module evaluation