Alternatives to pie charts: coxcomb and waffle charts

Packages we will need

library(tidyverse)
library(rnaturalearth)
library(countrycode)
library(peacesciencer)
library(ggthemes)
library(bbplot)

If we want to convey nuance in the data, sometimes that information is lost if we display many groups in a pie chart.

According to Bernard Marr, our brains are used to equal slices when we think of fractions of a whole. When the slices aren’t equal, as often is the case with real-world data, it’s difficult to envision the parts of a whole pie chart accurately.

Below are some slight alternatives that we can turn to and visualise different values across groups.

I’m going to compare regions around the world on their total energy consumption levels since the 1900s.

First, we can download the region data with information about the geography and income levels for each group, using the ne_countries() function from the rnaturalearth package.

map <- ne_countries(scale = "medium", returnclass = "sf")

Click here to learn more about downloading map data from the rnaturalearth package.

Next we will select the variables that we are interested in, namely the income group variable and geographic region variable:

map %>% 
  select(name_long, subregion, income_gr) %>% as_data_frame() -> region_var

And add a variable of un_code that it will be easier to merge datasets in a bit. Click here to learn more about countrycode() function.

region_var$un_code <- countrycode(region_var$name_long, "country.name", "un")

Next, we will download national military capabilities (NMC) dataset. These variables – which attempt to operationalize a country’s power – are military expenditure, military personnel, energy consumption, iron and steel production, urban population, and total population. It serves as the basis for the most widely used indicator of national capability, CINC (Composite Indicator of National Capability) and covers the period 1816-2016.

To download them in one line of code, we use the create_stateyears() function from the peacesciencer package.

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states <- create_stateyears(mry = FALSE) %>% add_nmc()

Click here to read more about downloading Correlates of War and other IR variables from the peacesciencer package

Next we add a UN location code so we can easily merge both datasets we downloaded!

states$un_code <- countrycode(states$statenme, "country.name", "un")
states_df <- merge(states, region_var, by ="un_code", all.x = TRUE)

Next, let’s make the coxcomb graph.

First, we will create one high income group. The map dataset has a separate column for OECD and non-OECD countries. But it will be easier to group them together into one category. We do with with the ifelse() function within mutate().

Next we filter out any country that is NA in the dataset, just to keep it cleaner.

We then group the dataset according to income group and sum all the primary energy consumption in each region since 1900.

When we get to the ggplotting, we want order the income groups from biggest to smallest. To do this, we use the reorder() function with income_grp as the second argument.

To create the coxcomb chart, we need the geom_bar() and coord_polar() lines.

With the coord_polar() function, it takes the following arguments :

theta – the variable we map the angle to (either x or y)
start – indicates the starting point from 12 o’clock in radians
direction – whether we plot the data clockwise (1) or anticlockwise (-1)

We feed in a theta of “x” (this is important!), then a starting point of 0 and direction of -1.

Next we add nicer colours with hex values and label the legend in the scale_fill_manual() function.

I like using the fonts and size stylings in the bbc_style() theme.

Last we can delete some of the ticks and text from the plot to make it cleaner.

Last we add our title and source!

states_df %>% 
  mutate(income_grp = ifelse(income_grp == "1. High income: OECD", "1. High income", ifelse(income_grp == "2. High income: nonOECD", "1. High income", income_grp))) %>% 
  filter(!is.na(income_grp)) %>% 
  filter(year > 1899) %>% 
  group_by(income_grp) %>% 
  summarise(sum_pec = sum(pec, na.rm = TRUE)) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = reorder(sum_pec, income_grp), y = sum_pec, fill = as.factor(income_grp))) + 
  geom_bar(stat = "identity") + 
  coord_polar("x", start = 0, direction = -1)  + 
  ggthemes::theme_pander() + 
  scale_fill_manual(
    values = c("#f94144", "#f9c74f","#43aa8b","#277da1"), 
    labels = c("High Income", "Upper Middle Income", "Lower Middle Income", "Low Income"), name = "Income Level") +
  bbplot::bbc_style() + 
  theme(axis.text = element_blank(),
            axis.title.x = element_blank(),
            axis.title.y = element_blank(),
            axis.ticks = element_blank(),
            panel.grid = element_blank()) + 
  ggtitle(label = "Primary Energy Consumption across income levels since 1900", subtitle = "Source: Correlates of War CINC")

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We can compare to the number of countries in each region :

states_df %>% 
  mutate(income_grp = ifelse(income_grp == "1. High income: OECD", "1. High income",
 ifelse(income_grp == "2. High income: nonOECD", "1. High income", income_grp))) %>% 
  filter(!is.na(income_grp)) %>% 
  filter(year == 2016) %>% 
  count(income_grp) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(reorder(n, income_grp), n, fill = as.factor(income_grp))) + 
  geom_bar(stat = "identity") + 
  coord_polar("x", start = 0, direction = - 1)  + 
  ggthemes::theme_pander() + 
  scale_fill_manual(
    values = c("#f94144", "#f9c74f","#43aa8b","#277da1"), 
    labels = c("High Income", "Upper Middle Income", "Lower Middle Income", "Low Income"), 
    name = "Income Level") +
  bbplot::bbc_style() + 
  theme(axis.text = element_blank(),
        axis.title.x = element_blank(),
        axis.title.y = element_blank(),
        axis.ticks = element_blank(),
        panel.grid = element_blank()) + 
  ggtitle(label = "Number of countries per region")

Another variation is the waffle plot!

It is important we do not install the CRAN version, but rather the version in development. I made the mistake of installing the non-github version and nothing worked.

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It was an ocean of error messages.

So, instead, install the following version:

remotes::install_github("hrbrmstr/waffle")
library(waffle)

When we add the waffle::geom_plot() there are some arguments we can customise.

n_rows – rhe default is 10 but this is something you can play around with to see how long or wide you want the chart
size – again we can play around with this number to see what looks best
color – I will set to white for the lines in the graph, the default is black but I think that can look a bit too busy.
flip – set to TRUE or FALSE for whether you want the coordinates horizontal or vertically stacked
make_proportional – if we set to TRUE, compute proportions from the raw values? (i.e. each value n will be replaced with n/sum(n)); default is FALSE

We can also add theme_enhance_waffle() to make the graph cleaner and less cluttered.

states_df %>% 
  filter(year == 2016) %>% 
  filter(!is.na(income_grp)) %>% 
  mutate(income_grp = ifelse(income_grp == "1. High income: OECD",
 "1. High income", ifelse(income_grp == "2. High income: nonOECD", "1. High income", income_grp))) %>% 
  count(income_grp) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(fill = income_grp, values = n)) +
  scale_fill_manual(
values = c("#f94144", "#f9c74f","#43aa8b","#277da1"), 
labels = c("High Income", "Upper Middle Income", 
"Lower Middle Income", "Low Income"), 
name = "Income Level") +
  waffle::geom_waffle(n_rows = 10, size = 0.5, colour = "white",
              flip = TRUE, make_proportional = TRUE) + bbplot::bbc_style() +  
  theme_enhance_waffle() + 
  ggtitle(label = "Number of countries per region")

We can also look at the sum of military expenditure across each region

states_df %>% 
  filter(!is.na(income_grp)) %>%
  filter(year > 1899) %>% 
  mutate(income_grp = ifelse(income_grp == "1. High income: OECD",
 "1. High income", ifelse(income_grp == "2. High income: nonOECD", 
"1. High income", income_grp))) %>% 
group_by(income_grp) %>%
  summarise(sum_military = sum(milex, na.rm = TRUE)) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(fill = income_grp, values = sum_military)) +
  scale_fill_manual(
    values = c("#f94144", "#f9c74f","#43aa8b","#277da1"), 
    labels = c("High Income", "Upper Middle Income", 
               "Lower Middle Income", "Low Income"), 
    name = "Income Level") +
  geom_waffle(n_rows = 10, size = 0.3, colour = "white",
              flip = TRUE, make_proportional = TRUE) + bbplot::bbc_style() +  
  theme_enhance_waffle() + 
  ggtitle(label = "Sum of military expenditure per region")

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Compare Irish census years with compareBars and csodata package in R

Packages we will need:

library(csodata)
library(janitor)
library(ggcharts)
library(compareBars)
library(tidyverse)

First, let’s download population data from the Irish census with the Central Statistics Office (CSO) API package, developed by Conor Crowley.

You can search for the data you want to analyse via R or you can go to the CSO website and browse around the site.

I prefer looking through the site because sometimes I stumble across a dataset I didn’t even think to look for!

Keep note of the code beside the red dot star symbol if you’re looking around for datasets.

Click here to check out the CRAN PDF for the CSO package.

You can search for keywords with cso_search_toc(). I want total population counts for the whole country.

cso_search_toc("total population")

We can download the variables we want by entering the code into the cso_get_data() function

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irish_pop <- cso_get_data("EY007")
View(irish_pop)

The EY007 code downloads population census data in both 2011 and 2016 at every age.

It needs a little bit of tidying to get it ready for graphing.

irish_pop %<>%  
  clean_names()

First, we can be lazy and use the clean_names() function from the janitor package.

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Next we can get rid of the rows that we don’t want with select().

Then we use the pivot_longer() function to turn the data.frame from wide to long and to turn the x2011 and x2016 variables into one year variable.

irish_pop %>% 
  filter(at_each_year_of_age == "Population") %>% 
  filter(sex == 'Both sexes') %>% 
  filter(age_last_birthday != "All ages") %>% 
  select(!statistic) %>% 
  select(!sex) %>% 
  select(!at_each_year_of_age) -> irish_wide

irish_wide %>% 
  pivot_longer(!age_last_birthday,
    names_to = "year", 
    values_to = "pop_count",
    values_drop_na = TRUE) %>% 
    mutate(year = as.factor(year)) -> irish_long

No we can create our pyramid chart with the pyramid_chart() from the ggcharts package. The first argument is the age category for both the 2011 and 2016 data. The second is the actual population counts for each year. Last, enter the group variable that indicates the year.

irish_long %>%   
  pyramid_chart(age_last_birthday, pop_count, year)

One problem with the pyramid chart is that it is difficult to discern any differences between the two years without really really examining each year.

One way to more easily see the differences with the compareBars function

The compareBars package created by David Ranzolin can help to simplify comparative bar charts! It’s a super simple function to use that does a lot of visualisation leg work under the hood!

First we need to pivot the data.frame back to wide format and then input the age, and then the two groups – x2011 and x2016 – in the compareBars() function.

We can add more labels and colors to customise the graph also!

irish_long %>% 
  pivot_wider(names_from = year, values_from = pop_count) %>% 
  compareBars(age_last_birthday, x2011, x2016, orientation = "horizontal",
              xLabel = "Population",
              yLabel = "Year",
              titleLabel = "Irish Populations",
              subtitleLabel = "Comparing 2011 and 2016",
              fontFamily = "Arial",
              compareVarFill1 = "#FE6D73",
              compareVarFill2 = "#17C3B2")

We can see that under the age of four-ish, 2011 had more at the time. And again, there were people in their twenties in 2011 compared to 2016.

However, there are more older people in 2016 than in 2011.

Similar to above it is a bit busy! So we can create groups for every five age years categories and examine the broader trends with fewer horizontal bars.

First we want to remove the word “years” from the age variable and convert it to a numeric class variable. We can easily do this with the parse_number() function from the readr package

irish_wide %<>% 
mutate(age_num = readr::parse_number(as.character(age_last_birthday)))

Next we can group the age years together into five year categories, zero to 5 years, 6 to 10 years et cetera.

We use the cut() function to divide the numeric age_num variable into equal groups. We use the seq() function and input age 0 to 100, in increments of 5.

irish_wide$age_group = cut(irish_wide$age_num, seq(0, 100, 5))

Next, we can use group_by() to calculate the sum of each population number in each five year category.

And finally, we use the distinct() function to remove the duplicated rows (i.e. we only want to keep the first row that gives us the five year category’s population count for each category.

irish_wide %<>% 
  group_by(age_group) %>% 
  mutate(five_year_2011 = sum(x2011)) %>% 
  mutate(five_year_2016 = sum(x2016)) %>% 
  distinct(five_year_2011, five_year_2016, .keep_all = TRUE)

Next plot the bar chart with the five year categories

compareBars(irish_wide, age_group, five_year_2011, five_year_2016, orientation = "horizontal",
              xLabel = "Population",
              yLabel = "Year",
              titleLabel = "Irish Populations",
              subtitleLabel = "Comparing 2011 and 2016",
              fontFamily = "Arial",
              compareVarFill1 = "#FE6D73",
              compareVarFill2 = "#17C3B2")

irish_wide2 %>% 
  select(age_group, five_year_2011, five_year_2016) %>% 
  pivot_longer(!age_group,
             names_to = "year", 
             values_to = "pop_count",
             values_drop_na = TRUE) %>% 
  mutate(year = as.factor(year)) -> irishlong2

irishlong2 %>%   
  pyramid_chart(age_group, pop_count, year)

Graph linear model plots with sjPlots in R

This blog post will look at the plot_model() function from the sjPlot package. This plot can help simply visualise the coefficients in a model.

Packages we need:

library(sjPlot)
library(kable)

We can look at variables that are related to citizens’ access to public services.

This dependent variable measures equal access access to basic public services, such as access to security, primary education, clean water, and healthcare and whether they are distributed equally or unequally according to socioeconomic position.

Higher scores indicate a more equal society.

I will throw some variables into the model and see what relationships are statistically significant.

The variables in the model are

level of judicial constraint on the executive branch,
freedom of information (such as freedom of speech and uncensored media),
level of democracy,
level of regime corruption and
strength of civil society.

So first, we run a simple linear regression model with the lm() function:

summary(my_model <- lm(social_access ~ judicial_constraint +
        freedom_information +
        democracy_score + 
        regime_corruption +
        civil_society_strength, 
        data = df))

We can use knitr package to produce a nice table or the regression coefficients with kable().

I write out the independent variable names in the caption argument

I also choose the four number columns in the col.names argument. These numbers are:

beta coefficient,
standard error,
t-score
p-value

I can choose how many decimals I want for each number columns with the digits argument.

And lastly, to make the table, I can set the type to "html". This way, I can copy and paste it into my blog post directly.

my_model %>% 
tidy() %>%
kable(caption = "Access to public services by socio-economic position.", 
col.names = c("Predictor", "B", "SE", "t", "p"),
digits = c(0, 2, 3, 2, 3), "html")

Access to public services by socio-economic position
Predictor	B	SE	t	p
(Intercept)	1.98	0.380	5.21	0.000
Judicial constraints	-0.03	0.485	-0.06	0.956
Freedom information	-0.60	0.860	-0.70	0.485
Democracy Score	2.61	0.807	3.24	0.001
Regime Corruption	-2.75	0.381	-7.22	0.000
Civil Society Strength	-1.67	0.771	-2.17	0.032

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Higher democracy scores are significantly and positively related to equal access to public services for different socio-economic groups.

There is no statistically significant relationship between judicial constraint on the executive.

But we can also graphically show the coefficients in a plot with the sjPlot package.

There are many different arguments you can add to change the colors of bars, the size of the font or the thickness of the lines.

p <-  plot_model(my_model, 
      line.size = 8, 
      show.values = TRUE,
      colors = "Set1",
      vline.color = "#d62828",
      axis.labels = c("Civil Society Strength",  "Regime Corruption", "Democracy Score", "Freedom information", "Judicial constraints"), title = "Equal access to public services distributed by socio-economic position")

p + theme_sjplot(base_size = 20)

So how can we interpret this graph?

If a bar goes across the vertical red line, the coefficient is not significant. The further the bar is from the line, the higher the t-score and the more significant the coefficient!

Make a timeline graph with dates in ggplot2

We will use the geom_segment layer from ggplot2 to make a timeline graph!

This layer takes

x and xend for the start of the segment lines
y and yend inputs for the end of the segment lines

For our timeline, the x will be the start of each Irish Taoiseach’s term.

The xend will be the end of their term, when they get kicked out of office.

Taoisigh (plural of Taoiseach) are Irish prime ministers and are in charge of the executive branch when their party is in change.

For Ireland, that means that basically every Taoiseach has been the leader of one of the two main parties – Fianna Fail or Fine Gael.

Not very exciting.

Also they have all been men.

This is also not very exciting.

We have a bit more to go with increasing the diversity in Ireland’s top job.

The y argument is the Taoiseach number in office. Although there have been fifteen men that have held the office of Taoiseach, this does not mean that they only held office for one time only.

Ireland has a parliamentary system so when a party loses an election, the former Taoiseach can become the leader of the opposition and hope in the future they can become Taoiseach again. Some men have been Taoiseach two or three times in non-consecutive terms.

When we are adding the labels with the geom_text() layer, I created an order variable which indicates the first time each man took the office of Taoiseach.

This is so I only have the name of each man only once in the graph. If we don’t do this step, if a man held office more than once, their name appears every time on the graph and the plot becomes a crowded mess.

My graphs usually…

I add the ifelse statement so that the first name appears after the segment line and therefore text does not take up too much room on the left edge of the graph.

Last we use the scale_color_manual() function with nice hex colors for each of the political parties.

time_line <- df %>% 
 ggplot(aes(x = as.Date(start), y = number, color = party_factor)) +
 geom_segment(aes(xend = as.Date(end), yend = number, color =  party_factor), size = 6) +
 geom_text(aes(label = order, hjust = ifelse(taoiseach_number < 2, -0.7, 1.1)), size = 8, show.legend = FALSE) +
 scale_color_manual(values = c("Fine Gael" = "#004266", "Fianna Fáil" = "#FCB322", "Cumann na nGaedheal" = "#D62828"))

I increase the limits of the graph to accommodate the name labels. Most of the time, these extra bits of code in ggplot2 depend on the type of data you have and what fits on the graph plane nicely!

So this stages is often only finished after trial-and-error.

I add a snazzy theme_fivethirtyeight() theme from ggthemes package.

Last, with the theme() function, we can remove most of the elements of the graph to make the graph cleaner.

time_line <- time_line + 
  expand_limits(x = as.Date("1915-01-01")) +
  theme_fivethirtyeight() +
  theme(legend.position = "top",
        legend.title = element_blank(),
        legend.direction = "vertical",
        axis.title.y = element_blank(),
        axis.text.y = element_blank(),
        text = element_text(size = 20)) +
  labs(title = "Taoiseach Terms in Ireland",
 subtitle = "From 1922 to 2021")

We can also create the pie chart to see which party has held power longest in Ireland.

With dplyr we can subtract the start date from the end date and add all the Taoiseach durations (in days) together with the cumsum() argument.

We then choose the highest duration value for each party with the slice(which.max()) functions.

I was lazy and I just re-wrote the values in a new data.frame and called it counts.

df %>%
  group_by(party_factor) %>% 
  dplyr::summarise(max_count = cumsum(duration_number)) %>%  
  slice(which.max(max_count)) %>% 
  select(party_factor, max_count) %>% 
  arrange(desc(max_count))

counts <- data.frame(group = c("Cumann na nGaedheal", "Fine Gael" ,"Fianna Fáil"), 
                     value = c(3381, 10143, 22539))

Create proportion values for our pie-chart graph. To do this divide value by the sum of the values and multiply by 100.

data <- counts %>% 
  arrange(desc(group)) %>%
  dplyr::mutate(prop = value / sum(value) * 100)

Change the numeric variables to factors.

data$duration <- as.factor(data$value)
data$party_factor <- as.factor(data$group)

We use the coord_polar() to create the piechart. To learn more, check out the r-graph-gallery page about creating pie-charts:

pie_chart <- ggplot(data, aes(x = ", y = prop, fill = group)) + geom_bar(stat = "identity", width = 1, color = "white") + coord_polar("y", start = 0) +

theme(legend.position = "none") + scale_fill_manual(values = c("Fine Gael" = "#004266", "Fianna Fáil" = "#FCB322", "Cumann na nGaedheal" = "#D62828")) +
 labs(title = "Which party held the office of Taoiseach longest?", subtitle = "From 1922 to 2021")

We can tidy up the plot and get rid of theme elements we don’t want with theme_void()

pie_chart <- pie_chart + theme_void() + theme(legend.title = element_blank(), legend.position = none, text = element_text(size = 40))

I want to add both graphs together so I can save the pie chart with a transparent background with the ggsave() function. I also make sure the lines are not jagged with the type = "cairo" from with Cairo package.

ggsave(pie_chart, file="pie_chart.png", type="cairo", bg = "transparent", width = 50, height = 50, units = "cm")

And we can use canva.com to add them together and create a single chart

And viola!

Examining speeches from the UN Security Council Part 1

Let’s look at how many speeches took place at the UN Security Council every year from 1995 until 2019.

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I want to only look at countries, not organisations. So a quick way to do that is to add a variable to indicate whether the speaker variable has an ISO code.

Only countries have ISO codes, so I can use this variable to filter away all the organisations that made speeches

library(countrycode)

speech$iso2 <- countrycode(speech$country, "country.name", "iso2c")

library(bbplot)

speech %>% 
  dplyr::filter(!is.na(iso2)) %>% 
  group_by(year) %>% 
  count() %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = year, y = n)) + 
  geom_line(size = 1.2, alpha = 0.4) +
  geom_label(aes(label = n)) +
  bbplot::bbc_style() +
  theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5)) +
  labs(title = "Number of speeches given by countries at UNSC")

We can see there has been a relatively consistent upward trend in the number of speeches that countries are given at the UN SC. Time will tell what impact COVID will have on these trends.

There was a particularly sharp increase in speeches in 2015.

We can look and see who was talking, and in the next post, we can examine what they were talking about in 2015 with some simple text analytic packages and functions.

First, we will filter only the year 2015 and count the number of observations per group (i.e. the number of speeches per country this year).

To add flags to the graph, add the iso2 code to the dataset (and it must be in lower case).

Click here to read more about adding circular flags to graphs and maps

speech %>% 
  dplyr::filter(year == 2015) %>% 
  group_by(country) %>% 
  dplyr::summarise(speech_count = n()) -> speech_2015

speech_2015$iso2_lower <- tolower(speech_2015$iso2)

We can clean up the names and create a variable that indicates whether the country is one of the five Security Council Permanent Members, a Temporary Member elected or a Non-,ember.

I also clean up the names to make the country’s names in the dataset smaller. For example, “United Kingdom Of Great Britain And Northern Ireland”, will be very cluttered in the graph compared to just “UK” so it will be easier to plot.

library(ggflags)
library(ggthemes)

speech_2015 %>% 
# To avoid the graph being too busy, we only look at countries that gave over 20 speeches
  dplyr::filter(speech_count > 20) %>% 

# Clean up some names so the graph is not too crowded
  dplyr::mutate(country = ifelse(country == "United Kingdom Of Great Britain And Northern Ireland", "UK", country)) %>%
  dplyr::mutate(country = ifelse(country == "Russian Federation", "Russia", country)) %>%
  dplyr::mutate(country = ifelse(country == "United States Of America", "USA", country)) %>%
  dplyr::mutate(country = ifelse(country == "Republic Of Korea", "South Korea", country)) %>%
  dplyr::mutate(country = ifelse(country == "Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic Of)", "Venezuela", country)) %>% 
  dplyr::mutate(country = ifelse(country == "Islamic Republic Of Iran", "Iran", country)) %>% 
  dplyr::mutate(country = ifelse(country == "Syrian Arab Republic", "Syria", country)) %>% 
 
# Create a Member status variable:
# China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States are UNSC Permanent Members
  dplyr::mutate(Member = ifelse(country == "UK", "Permanent", 
  ifelse(country == "USA", "Permanent",
  ifelse(country == "China", "Permanent",
  ifelse(country == "Russia", "Permanent",
  ifelse(country == "France", "Permanent",

# Non-permanent members in their first year (elected October 2014)
  ifelse(country == "Angola", "Temporary (Elected 2014)",
  ifelse(country == "Malaysia", "Temporary (Elected 2014)",              
  ifelse(country == "Venezuela", "Temporary (Elected 2014)",       
  ifelse(country == "New Zealand", "Temporary (Elected 2014)",
  ifelse(country == "Spain", "Temporary (Elected 2014)",                 

# Non-permanent members in their second year (elected October 2013)        
  ifelse(country == "Chad", "Temporary (Elected 2013)",                                                               
  ifelse(country == "Nigeria", "Temporary (Elected 2013)",
  ifelse(country == "Jordan", "Temporary (Elected 2013)",
  ifelse(country == "Chile", "Temporary (Elected 2013)",
  ifelse(country == "Lithuania", "Temporary (Elected 2013)", 
 
# Non members that will join UNSC next year (elected October 2015)          
  ifelse(country == "Egypt", "Non-Member (Elected 2015)",                                                               
  ifelse(country == "Sengal", "Non-Member (Elected 2015)",
  ifelse(country == "Uruguay", "Non-Member (Elected 2015)",
  ifelse(country == "Japan", "Non-Member (Elected 2015)",
  ifelse(country == "Ukraine", "Non-Member (Elected 2015)", 

# Everyone else is a regular non-member           
               "Non-Member"))))))))))))))))))))) -> speech_2015

When we have over a dozen nested ifelse() statements, we will need to check that we have all our corresponding closing brackets.

Next choose some colours for each Memberships status. I always take my hex values from https://coolors.co/

membership_palette <- c("Permanent" = "#e63946", "Non-Member" = "#2a9d8f", "Non-Member (Elected 2015)" = "#a8dadc", "Temporary (Elected 2013)" = "#457b9d","Temporary (Elected 2014)" = "#1d3557")

Season 4 Applause GIF by The Simpsons - Find & Share on GIPHY

And all that is left to do is create the bar chart.

With geom_bar(), we can indicate stat = "identity" because we are giving the plot the y values and ggplot does not need to do the automatic aggregation on its own.

To make sure the bars are descending from most speeches to fewest speeches, we use the reorder() function. The second argument is the variable according to which we want to order the bars. So for us, we give the speech_count integer variable to order our country bars with x = reorder(country, speech_count).

We can change the bar from vertical to horizontal with coordflip().

I add flags with geom_flag() and feed the lower case ISO code to the country = iso2_lower argument.

I add the bbc_style() again because I like the font, size and sparse lines on the plot.

We can move the title of the plot into the centre with plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5))

Finally, we can supply the membership_palette vector to the values = argument in the scale_fill_manual() function to specify the colours we want.

speech_2015 %>%  ggplot(aes(x = reorder(country, speech_count), y = speech_count)) + 
  geom_bar(stat = "identity", aes(fill = as.factor(Member))) +
  coord_flip() +
  ggflags::geom_flag(mapping = aes(y = -15, x = country, country = iso2_lower), size = 10) +
  geom_label(mapping = aes( label = speech_count), size = 8) +
  theme(legend.position = "top") + 
  labs(title = "UNSC speeches given in 2015", y = "Number of speeches", x = "") +
  bbplot::bbc_style() +
  theme(text = element_text(size = 20),
  plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5)) +
  scale_fill_manual(values =  membership_palette)

In the next post, we will look at the texts themselves. Here is a quick preview.

library(tidytext)

speech_tokens <- speech %>%
  unnest_tokens(word, text) %>% 

  anti_join(stop_words)

We count the number of tokens (i.e. words) for each country in each year. With the distinct() function we take only one observation per year per country. This reduces the number of rows from 16601520 in speech_tokesn to 3142 rows in speech_words_count :

speech_words_count <- speech_tokens %>%
  group_by(year, country) %>%
  mutate(word_count = n_distinct(word)) %>%
  select(country, year, word_count, permanent, iso2_lower) %>%
  distinct()

Subset the data.frame to only plot the five Permanent Members. Now we only have 125 rows (25 years of total annual word counts for 5 countries!)

permanent_words_summary <- speech_words_count %>% 
  filter(permanent == 1)

Choose some nice hex colors for my five countries:

five_pal <- c("#ffbc42","#d81159","#8f2d56","#218380","#73d2de")

It is a bit convoluted to put the flags ONLY at the start and end of the lines. We need to subset the dataset two times with the geom_flag() sections. First, we subset the data.frame to year == 1995 and the flags appear at the start of the word_count on the y axis. Then we subset to year == 2019 and do the same

ggplot(data = permanent_word_summary) +
  geom_line(aes(x = year, y = word_count, group = as.factor(country), color = as.factor(country)), 
size = 2) +
  ggflags::geom_flag(data = subset(permanent_word_summary, year == 1995), aes(x = 1995, y = word_count,  country = iso2_lower), size = 9) +
  ggflags::geom_flag(data = subset(permanent_word_summary, 
year == 2019), 
aes(x = 2019, 
y = word_count, 
country = iso2_lower), 
size = 12) + 
  bbplot::bbc_style() +
 theme(legend.position = "right") + labs(title = "Number of words spoken by Permanent Five in the UN Security Council") + 
  scale_color_manual(values = five_pal)

We can see that China has been the least chattiest country if we are measuring chatty with number of words spoken. Translation considerations must also be taken into account. We can see here again at around the 2015 mark, there was a discernible increase in the number of words spoken by most of the countries!

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Create a correlation matrix with GGally package in R

We can create very informative correlation matrix graphs with one function.

Packages we will need:

library(GGally)
library(bbplot) #for pretty themes

First, choose some nice hex colors.

my_palette <- c("#005D8F", "#F2A202")

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Next, we can go create a dichotomous factor variable and divide the continuous “freedom from torture scale” variable into either above the median or below the median score. It’s a crude measurement but it serves to highlight trends.

Blue means the country enjoys high freedom from torture. Yellow means the county suffers from low freedom from torture and people are more likely to be tortured by their government.

Then we feed our variables into the ggpairs() function from the GGally package.

I use the columnLabels to label the graphs with their full names and the mapping argument to choose my own color palette.

I add the bbc_style() format to the corr_matrix object because I like the font and size of this theme. And voila, we have our basic correlation matrix (Figure 1).

corr_matrix <- vdem90 %>% 
  dplyr::mutate(
    freedom_torture = ifelse(torture >= 0.65, "High", "Low"),
    freedom_torture = as.factor(freedom_t))
  dplyr::select(freedom_torture, civil_lib, class_eq) %>% 
  ggpairs(columnLabels = c('Freedom from Torture', 'Civil Liberties', 'Class Equality'), 
    mapping = ggplot2::aes(colour = freedom_torture)) +
  scale_fill_manual(values = my_palette) +
  scale_color_manual(values = my_palette)

corr_matrix + bbplot::bbc_style()

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First off, in Figure 2 we can see the centre plots in the diagonal are the distribution plots of each variable in the matrix

In Figure 3, we can look at the box plot for the ‘civil liberties index’ score for both high (blue) and low (yellow) ‘freedom from torture’ categories.

The median civil liberties score for countries in the high ‘freedom from torture’ countries is far higher than in countries with low ‘freedom from torture’ (i.e. citizens in these countries are more likely to suffer from state torture). The spread / variance is also far great in states with more torture.

In Figur 4, we can focus below the diagonal and see the scatterplot between the two continuous variables – civil liberties index score and class equality index scores.

We see that there is a positive relationship between civil liberties and class equality. It looks like a slightly U shaped, quadratic relationship but a clear relationship trend is not very clear with the countries with higher torture prevalence (yellow) showing more randomness than the countries with high freedom from torture scores (blue).

Saying that, however, there are a few errant blue points as outliers to the trend in the plot.

The correlation score is also provided between the two categorical variables and the correlation score between civil liberties and class equality scores is 0.52.

Examining at the scatterplot, if we looked only at countries with high freedom from torture, this correlation score could be higher!

Add weights to survey data with survey package in R: Part 2

Click here to read why need to add pspwght and pweight to the ESS data in Part 1.

Packages we will need:

library(survey)
library(srvy)
library(stargazer)
library(gtsummary)
library(tidyverse)

Click here to learn how to access and download ESS round data for the thirty-ish European countries (depending on the year).

So with the essurvey package, I have downloaded and cleaned up the most recent round of the ESS survey, conducted in 2018.

We will examine the different demographic variables that relate to levels of trust in politicians across 29 European countries (education level, gender, age et cetera).

Before we create the survey weight objects, we can first make a bar chart to look at the different levels of trust in the different countries.

We can use the cut() function to divide the 10-point scale into three groups of “low”, “mid” and “high” levels of trust in politicians.

I also choose traffic light hex colors in color_palette vector and add full country names with countrycode() so it’s easier to read the graph

color_palette <- c("1" = "#f94144", "2" = "#f8961e", "3" = "#43aa8b")

round9$country_name <- countrycode(round9$country, "iso2c", "country.name")

trust_graph <- round9 %>% 
  dplyr::filter(!is.na(trust_pol)) %>% 
  dplyr::mutate(trust_category = cut(trust_pol, 
                                     breaks=c(-Inf, 3, 7, Inf), 
                                     labels=c(1,2,3))) %>% 
  mutate(trust_category = as.numeric(trust_category)) %>% 
  mutate(trust_pol_fac = as.factor(trust_category)) %>%
  ggplot(aes(x = reorder(country_name, trust_category))) +
  geom_bar(aes(fill = trust_pol_fac), 
               position = "fill") +
  bbplot::bbc_style() +
  coord_flip() 

trust_graph <- trust_graph + scale_fill_manual(values= color_palette, 
                                      name="Trust level",
                                      breaks=c(1,2,3),
                                      labels=c("Low", "Mid", "High"))

The graph lists countries in descending order according to the percentage of sampled participants that indicated they had low trust levels in politicians.

The respondents in Croatia, Bulgaria and Spain have the most distrust towards politicians.

Croatians when they see politicians

For this example, I want to compare different analyses to see what impact different weights have on the coefficient estimates and standard errors in the regression analyses:

with no weights (dEfIniTelYy not recommended by ESS)
with post-stratification weights only (not recommended by ESS) and
with the combined post-strat AND population weight (the recommended weighting strategy according to ESS)

First we create two special svydesign objects, with the survey package. To create this, we need to add a squiggly ~ symbol in front of the variables (Google tells me it is called a tilde).

The ids argument takes the cluster ID for each participant.

psu is a numeric variable that indicates the primary sampling unit within which the respondent was selected to take part in the survey. For example in Ireland, this refers to the particular electoral division of each participant.

The strata argument takes the numeric variable that codes which stratum each individual is in, according to the type of sample design each country used.

The first svydesign object uses only post-stratification weights: pspwght

Finally we need to specify the nest argument as TRUE. I don’t know why but it throws an error message if we don’t …

post_design <- svydesign(ids = ~psu, 
                         strata = ~stratum, 
                         weights = ~pspwght
                         data = round9, 
                         nest = TRUE)

To combine the two weights, we can multiply them together and store them as full_weight. We can then use that in the svydesign function

r2$full_weight <- r2$pweight*r2$pspwght
 

full_design <- svydesign(ids = ~psu, 
                         strata = ~stratum, 
                         weights = ~full_weight,
                         data = round9, 
                         nest = TRUE)
class(full_design)

With the srvyr package, we can convert a “survey.design” class object into a “tbl_svy” class object, which we can then use with tidyverse functions.

full_tidy_design <- as_survey(full_design)
class(full_tidy_design)

Click here to read the CRAN PDF for the srvyr package.

We can first look at descriptive statistics and see if the values change because of the inclusion of the weighted survey data.

First, we can compare the means of the survey data with and without the weights.

We can use the gtsummary package, which creates tables with tidyverse commands. It also can take a survey object

library(gtsummary)
round9 %>% select(trust_pol, trust_pol, age, edu_years, gender, religious, left_right, rural_urban) %>% 
  tbl_summary(include = c(trust_pol, age, edu_years, gender, religious, left_right, rural_urban),
                 statistic = list(all_continuous() ~"{mean} ({sd})"))

And we look at the descriptive statistics with the full_design weights:

full_design %>% 
  tbl_svysummary(include = c(trust_pol, age, edu_years, gender, religious, left_right),
                 statistic = list(all_continuous() ~"{mean} ({sd})"))

**WITHOUT** weights AND **WITH** weights (post-stratification and population weights)

We can see that gender variable is more equally balanced between males (1) and females (2) in the data with weights

Additionally, average trust in politicians is lower in the sample with full weights.

Participants are more left-leaning on average in the sample with full weights than in the sample with no weights.

Next, we can look at a general linear model without survey weights and then with the two survey weights we just created.

Do we see any effect of the weighting design on the standard errors and significance values?

So, we first run a simple general linear model. In this model, R assumes that the data are independent of each other and based on that assumption, calculates coefficients and standard errors.

simple_glm <- glm(trust_pol ~ left_right + edu_years + rural_urban + age, data = round9)

Next, we will look at only post-stratification weights. We use the svyglm function and instead of using the data = r2, we use design = post_design .

post_strat_glm <- svyglm(trust_pol ~ left_right + edu_years + rural_urban  + age, design = post_design)

And finally, we will run the regression with the combined post-stratification AND population weight with the design = full_design argument.

full_weight_glm <- svyglm(trust_pol ~ left_right + edu_years + rural_urban + age, design = full_design))

With the stargazer package, we can compare the models side-by-side:

library(stargazer)
stargazer(simple_glm, post_strat_glm, full_weight_glm, type = "text")

We can see that the standard errors in brackets were increased for most of the variables in model (3) with both weights when compared to the first model with no weights.

The biggest change is the rural-urban scale variable. With no weights, it is positive correlated with trust in politicians. That is to say, the more urban a location the respondent lives, the more likely the are to trust politicians. However, after we apply both weights, it becomes negative correlated with trust. It is in fact the more rural the location in which the respondent lives, the more trusting they are of politicians.

Additionally, age becomes statistically significant, after we apply weights.

Of course, this model is probably incorrect as I have assumed that all these variables have a simple linear relationship with trust levels. If I really wanted to build a robust demographic model, I would have to consult the existing academic literature and test to see if any of these variables are related to trust levels in a non-linear way. For example, it could be that there is a polynomial relationship between age and trust levels, for example. This model is purely for illustrative purposes only!

Plus, when I examine the R2 score for my models, it is very low; this model of demographic variables accounts for around 6% of variance in level of trust in politicians. Again, I would have to consult the body of research to find other explanatory variables that can account for more variance in my dependent variable of interest!

We can look at the R2 and VIF score of GLM with the summ() function from the jtools package. The summ() function can take a svyglm object. Click here to read more about various functions in the jtools package.

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Add circular flags to maps and graphs with ggflags package in R

Packages we will need:

library(ggflags)
library(bbplot) # for pretty BBC style graphs
library(countrycode) # for ISO2 country codes
library(rvest) # for webscrapping

Click here to add rectangular flags to graphs and click here to add rectangular flags to MAPS!

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Apropos of this week’s US news, we are going to graph the number of different or autocoups in South America and display that as both maps and bar charts.

According to our pals at the Wikipedia, a self-coup, or autocoup (from the Spanish autogolpe), is a form of putsch or coup d’état in which a nation’s leader, despite having come to power through legal means, dissolves or renders powerless the national legislature and unlawfully assumes extraordinary powers not granted under normal circumstances.

In order to add flags to maps, we need to make sure our dataset has three variables for each country:

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Longitude
Latitude
ISO2 code (in lower case)

In order to add longitude and latitude, I will scrape these from a website with the rvest dataset and merge them with my existing dataset.

Click here to learn more about the rvest pacakge.

library(rvest)

coord <- read_html("https://developers.google.com/public-data/docs/canonical/countries_csv")

coord_tables <- coord %>% html_table(header = TRUE, fill = TRUE)

coord <- coord_tables[[1]]

map_df2 <- merge(map_df, coord, by.x= "iso_a2", by.y = "country", all.y = TRUE)

Click here to learn more about the merge() function

Next we need to add a variable with each country’s ISO code with the countrycode() function

Click here to learn more about the countrycode package.

autocoup_df$iso2c <- countrycode(autocoup_df$country_name, "country.name", "iso2c")

In this case, a warning message pops up to tell me:

Some values were not matched unambiguously: Kosovo, Somaliland, Zanzibar

One important step is to convert the ISO codes from upper case to lower case. The geom_flag() function from the ggflag package only recognises lower case (e.g Chile is cl, not CL).

autocoup_df$iso2_lower <- tolower(autocoup_df$iso_a2)

We have all the variables we will need for our geom_flag() function:

Add some hex colors as a vector that we can add to the graph:

coup_palette  <- c("#7d092f", "#b32520", "#fb8b24", "#57cc99")

Finally we can graph our maps comparing the different types of coups in South America.

Click here to learn how to graph variables onto maps with the rnaturalearth package.

The geom_flag() function requires an x = longitude, y = latitude and a country argument in the form of our lower case ISO2 country codes. You can play around the latitude and longitude flag and also label position by adding or subtracting from them. The size of the flag can be added outside the aes() argument.

We can place the number of coups under the flag with the geom_label() function.

The theme_map() function we add comes from ggthemes package.

autocoup_map <- autocoup_df%>% 
  dplyr::filter(subregion == "South America") %>%
  ggplot() +
  geom_sf(aes(fill = coup_cat)) +
  ggflags::geom_flag(aes(x = longitude, y = latitude+0.5, country = iso2_lower), size = 8) +
  geom_label(aes(x = longitude, y = latitude+3, label = auto_coup_sum, color = auto_coup_sum), fill  =  "white", colour = "black") +
  theme_map()
 
 
autocoup_map + scale_fill_manual(values = coup_palette, name = "Auto Coups", labels = c("No autocoup", "More than 1", "More than 10", "More than 50"))

Not hard at all.

And we can make a quick barchart to rank the countries. For this I will use square flags from the ggimage package. Click here to read more about the ggimage package

Additionally, I will use the theme from the bbplot pacakge. Click here to read more about the bbplot package.

library(ggimage)
library(bbplot)

pretty_colors <- c("#0f4c5c", "#5f0f40","#0b8199","#9a031e","#b32520","#ffca3a", "#fb8b24")

autocoup_df %>% 
  dplyr::filter(auto_coup_sum !=0) %>% 
  dplyr::filter(subregion == "South America") %>%
  ggplot(aes(x = reorder(country_name, auto_coup_sum), 
             y = auto_coup_sum, 
             group = country_name, 
             fill = country_name)) +
  geom_col() +
  coord_flip() +
  bbplot::bbc_style() +
  geom_text(aes(label = auto_coup_sum), 
            hjust = -0.5, size = 10,
            position = position_dodge(width = 1),
            inherit.aes = TRUE) +
  expand_limits(y = 63) +
  labs(title = "Autocoups in South America (1900-2019)",
       subtitle = "Source: Varieties of Democracy, 2019") +
  theme(legend.position = "none") +
  scale_fill_manual(values = pretty_colors) +
  ggimage::geom_flag(aes(y = -4, 
                         image = iso2_lower), 
                         size = 0.1)

And after a bit of playing around with all three different types of coup data, I created an infographic with canva.com

BBC style graphs with bbplot package in R

Packages we will need:

devtools::install_github('bbc/bbplot')
library(bbplot)

Click here to check out the vignette to read about all the different graphs with which you can use bbplot !

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We will look at the Soft Power rankings from Portland Communications. According to Wikipedia, In politics (and particularly in international politics), soft power is the ability to attract and co-opt, rather than coerce or bribe other countries to view your country’s policies and actions favourably. In other words, soft power involves shaping the preferences of others through appeal and attraction.

A defining feature of soft power is that it is non-coercive; the currency of soft power includes culture, political values, and foreign policies.

Joseph Nye’s primary definition, soft power is in fact:

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“the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. When you can get others to want what you want, you do not have to spend as much on sticks and carrots to move them in your direction. Hard power, the ability to coerce, grows out of a country’s military and economic might. Soft power arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals and policies. When our policies are seen as legitimate in the eyes of others, our soft power is enhanced”

(Nye, 2004: 256).

Every year, Portland Communication ranks the top countries in the world regarding their soft power. In 2019, the winner was la France!

Click here to read the most recent report by Portland on the soft power rankings.

We will also add circular flags to the graphs with the ggflags package. The geom_flag() requires the ISO two letter code as input to the argument … but it will only accept them in lower case. So first we need to make the country code variable suitable:

library(ggflags)
sp$iso2_lower <- tolower(sp$iso2)

Click here to read more about ggflags()

And we create a ggplot line graph with geom_flag() as a replacement to the geom_point() function

sp_graph <- sp %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = year, y = value, group = country)) +
  geom_line(aes(color = country, alpha = 1.8), size = 1.8) +
  ggflags::geom_flag(aes(country = iso2_lower), size = 8) + 
  scale_color_manual(values = my_pal) +
  labs(title = "Soft Power Ranking ",
       subtitle = "Portland Communications, 2015 - 2019")

And finally call our sp_graph object with the bbc_style() function

sp_graph + bbc_style() + theme(legend.position = "none")

Here I run a simple scatterplot and compare Post-Soviet states and see whether there has been a major change in class equality between 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Empire and today. Is there a relationship between class equality and demolcratisation? Is there a difference in the countries that are now in EU compared to the Post-Soviet states that are not?

library(ggrepel)  # to stop text labels overlapping
library(gridExtra)  # to place two plots side-by-side
library(ggbubr)  # to modify the gridExtra titles

region_liberties_91 <- vdem %>%
  dplyr::filter(year == 1991) %>% 
  dplyr::filter(regions == 'Post-Soviet') %>% 
  dplyr::filter(!is.na(EU_member)) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = democracy, y = class_equality, color = EU_member)) +
  geom_point(aes(size = population)) + 
  scale_alpha_continuous(range = c(0.1, 1)) 

plot_91 <- region_liberties_91 + 
  bbplot::bbc_style() + 
  labs(subtitle = "1991") +
  ylim(-2.5, 3.5) +
  xlim(0, 1) +
  geom_text_repel(aes(label = country_name), show.legend = FALSE, size = 7) +
  scale_size(guide="none") 

region_liberties_18 <- vdem %>%
  dplyr::filter(year == 2018) %>% 
  dplyr::filter(regions == 'Post-Soviet') %>% 
  dplyr::filter(!is.na(EU_member)) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = democracy_score, y = class_equality, color = EU_member)) +
  geom_point(aes(size = population)) + 
  scale_alpha_continuous(range = c(0.1, 1)) 

plot_18 <- region_liberties_15 + 
  bbplot::bbc_style() + 
  labs(subtitle = "2015") +
  ylim(-2.5, 3.5) +
  xlim(0, 1) +
  geom_text_repel(aes(label = country_name), show.legend = FALSE, size = 7) +
  scale_size(guide = "none") 

my_title = text_grob("Relationship between democracy and class equality in Post-Soviet states", size = 22, face = "bold") 
my_y = text_grob("Democracy Score", size = 20, face = "bold")
my_x = text_grob("Class Equality Score", size = 20, face = "bold", rot = 90)

grid.arrange(plot_1, plot_2, ncol=2,  top = my_title, bottom = my_y, left = my_x)

The BBC cookbook vignette offers the full function. So we can tweak it any way we want.

For example, if I want to change the default axis labels, I can make my own slightly adapted my_bbplot() function

my_bbplot <- function ()
  function ()
  {
    font <- "Helvetica"
    ggplot2::theme(plot.title = ggplot2::element_text(family = font, size = 28, face = "bold", color = "#222222"), 
    plot.subtitle = ggplot2::element_text(family = font,size = 22, margin = ggplot2::margin(9, 0, 9, 0)), 
    plot.caption = ggplot2::element_blank(),
    legend.position = "top", 
    legend.text.align = 0, 
    legend.background = ggplot2::element_blank(),
    legend.title = ggplot2::element_blank(), 
    legend.key = ggplot2::element_blank(),
    legend.text = ggplot2::element_text(family = font, size = 18, color = "#222222"), 
    axis.title = ggplot2::element_blank(),
    axis.text = ggplot2::element_text(family = font, size = 18, color = "#222222"), 
    axis.text.x = ggplot2::element_text(margin = ggplot2::margin(5, b = 10)),
    axis.line = ggplot2::element_blank(), 
    panel.grid.minor = ggplot2::element_blank(),
    panel.grid.major.y = ggplot2::element_line(color = "#cbcbcb"),
    panel.grid.major.x = ggplot2::element_line(color = "#cbcbcb"), 
    panel.background = ggplot2::element_blank(),
    strip.background = ggplot2::element_rect(fill = "white"),
    strip.text = ggplot2::element_text(size = 22, hjust = 0))
  }

The British Broadcasting Corporation, the home of upstanding journalism and subtle weathermen:

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Add weights to survey data with survey package in R: Part 1

With the European Social Survey (ESS), we will examine the different variables that are related to levels of trust in politicians across Europe in the latest round 9 (conducted in 2018).

Click here for Part 2.

Click here to learn about downloading ESS data into R with the essurvey package.

Packages we will need:

library(survey)
library(srvyr)

The survey package was created by Thomas Lumley, a professor from Auckland. The srvyr package is a wrapper packages that allows us to use survey functions with tidyverse.

Why do we need to add weights to the data when we analyse surveys?

When we import our survey data file, R will assume the data are independent of each other and will analyse this survey data as if it were collected using simple random sampling.

However, the reality is that almost no surveys use a simple random sample to collect data (the one exception being Iceland in ESS!)

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Rather, survey institutions choose complex sampling designs to reduce the time and costs of ultimately getting responses from the public.

Their choice of sampling design can lead to different estimates and the standard errors of the sample they collect.

For example, the sampling weight may affect the sample estimate, and choice of stratification and/or clustering may mean (most likely underestimated) standard errors.

As a result, our analysis of the survey responses will be wrong and not representative to the population we want to understand. The most problematic result is that we would arrive at statistical significance, when in reality there is no significant relationship between our variables of interest.

Therefore it is essential we don’t skip this step of correcting to account for weighting / stratification / clustering and we can make our sample estimates and confidence intervals more reliable.

This table comes from round 8 of the ESS, carried out in 2016. Each of the 23 countries has an institution in charge of carrying out their own survey, but they must do so in a way that meets the ESS standard for scientifically sound survey design (See Table 1).

Sampling weights aim to capture and correct for the differing probabilities that a given individual will be selected and complete the ESS interview.

For example, the population of Lithuania is far smaller than the UK. So the probability of being selected to participate is higher for a random Lithuanian person than it is for a random British person.

Additionally, within each country, if the survey institution chooses households as a sampling element, rather than persons, this will mean that individuals living alone will have a higher probability of being chosen than people in households with many people.

Click here to read in detail the sampling process in each country from round 1 in 2002. For example, if we take my country – Ireland – we can see the many steps involved in the country’s three-stage probability sampling design.

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The Primary Sampling Unit (PSU) is electoral districts. The institute then takes addresses from the Irish Electoral Register. From each electoral district, around 20 addresses are chosen (based on how spread out they are from each other). This is the second stage of clustering. Finally, one person is randomly chosen in each house to answer the survey, chosen as the person who will have the next birthday (third cluster stage).

Click here for more information about Design Effects (DEFF) and click here to read how ESS calculates design effects.

DEFF p refers to the design effect due to unequal selection probabilities (e.g. a person is more likely to be chosen to participate if they live alone)

DEFF c refers to the design effect due to clustering

According to Gabler et al. (1999), if we multiply these together, we get the overall design effect. The Irish design that was chosen means that the data’s variance is 1.6 times as large as you would expect with simple random sampling design. This 1.6 design effects figure can then help to decide the optimal sample size for the number of survey participants needed to ensure more accurate standard errors.

So, we can use the functions from the survey package to account for these different probabilities of selection and correct for the biases they can cause to our analysis.

In this example, we will look at demographic variables that are related to levels of trust in politicians. But there are hundreds of variables to choose from in the ESS data.

Click here for a list of all the variables in the European Social Survey and in which rounds they were asked. Not all questions are asked every year and there are a bunch of country-specific questions.

We can look at the last few columns in the data.frame for some of Ireland respondents (since we’ve already looked at the sampling design method above).

The dweight is the design weight and it is essentially the inverse of the probability that person would be included in the survey.

The pspwght is the post-stratification weight and it takes into account the probability of an individual being sampled to answer the survey AND ALSO other factors such as non-response error and sampling error. This post-stratificiation weight can be considered a more sophisticated weight as it contains more additional information about the realities survey design.

The pweight is the population size weight and it is the same for everyone in the Irish population.

When we are considering the appropriate weights, we must know the type of analysis we are carrying out. Different types of analyses require different combinations of weights. According to the ESS weighting documentation:

when analysing data for one country alone – we only need the design weight or the poststratification weight.
when comparing data from two or more countries but without reference to statistics that combine data from more than one country – we only need the design weight or the poststratification weight
when comparing data of two or more countries and with reference to the average (or combined total) of those countries – we need BOTH design or post-stratification weight AND population size weights together.
when combining different countries to describe a group of countries or a region, such as “EU accession countries” or “EU member states” = we need BOTH design or post-stratification weights AND population size weights.

ESS warn that their survey design was not created to make statistically accurate region-level analysis, so they say to carry out this type of analysis with an abundance of caution about the results.

ESS has a table in their documentation that summarises the types of weights that are suitable for different types of analysis:

Since we are comparing the countries, the optimal weight is a combination of post-stratification weights AND population weights together.

Click here to read Part 2 and run the regression on the ESS data with the survey package weighting design

Below is the code I use to graph the differences in mean level of trust in politicians across the different countries.

library(ggimage) # to add flags
library(countrycode) # to add ISO country codes

# r_agg is the aggregated mean of political trust for each countries' respondents.

r_agg %>% 
  dplyr::mutate(country, EU_member = ifelse(country == "BE" | country == "BG" | country == "CZ" | country == "DK" | country == "DE" | country == "EE" | country == "IE" | country == "EL" | country == "ES" | country == "FR" | country == "HR" | country == "IT" | country == "CY" | country == "LV" | country == "LT" | country == "LU" | country == "HU" | country == "MT" | country == "NL" | country == "AT" | country == "AT" | country == "PL" | country == "PT" | country == "RO" | country == "SI" | country == "SK" | country == "FI" | country == "SE","EU member", "Non EU member")) -> r_agg


r_agg %>% 
  filter(EU_member == "EU member") %>% 
  dplyr::summarize(eu_average = mean(mean_trust_pol)) 


r_agg$country_name <- countrycode(r_agg$country, "iso2c", "country.name")


#eu_average <- r_agg %>%
 # summarise_if(is.numeric, mean, na.rm = TRUE)


eu_avg <- data.frame(country = "EU average",
                     mean_trust_pol = 3.55,
                     EU_member =  "EU average",
                     country_name = "EU average")

r_agg <- rbind(r_agg, eu_avg)

 
my_palette <- c("EU average" = "#ef476f", 
                "Non EU member" = "#06d6a0", 
                "EU member" = "#118ab2")

r_agg <- r_agg %>%          
  dplyr::mutate(ordered_country = fct_reorder(country, mean_trust_pol))


r_graph <- r_agg %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = ordered_country, y = mean_trust_pol, group = country, fill = EU_member)) +
  geom_col() +
  ggimage::geom_flag(aes(y = -0.4, image = country), size = 0.04) +
  geom_text(aes(y = -0.15 , label = mean_trust_pol)) +
  scale_fill_manual(values = my_palette) + coord_flip()

r_graph