The flextable and gt packages have many, many options and helper
functions. The tabulator, summarizor, and
proc_freq functions from the flextable package are
particularly powerful ways of summarizing and describing data. Functions
that automate your descriptive statistics tables for you (e.g., the
amazing gtsummary
package) inevitably entail some level of compromise. It is
unreasonable for a single function to anticipate the diversity of needs
out there. Sometimes you need a table to be a particular way, and you
need to do the heaving lifting yourself. After all that, the
apa_style function will get a flextable or gt table close
to APA style. You may need to do some additional styling with flextable
or gt as well.
Here I create a table of means, standard deviations, and sample sizes
for several variables across groups. The particulars are not so
important here, just that flextable and gt can do most of the rest after
that. Flextable has a theme_apa function that can get
things very close to full APA style. The apa7 apa_style
function provides a little more flexibility with respect to fonts,
colors, and border widths. Getting gt to have APA style borders took me
a long time to figure out because of the complex rules by which borders
overwrite each other. The apa_style function saves me from
having to figure it all out repeatedly when working with gt tables.
d <- iris %>%
pivot_longer(where(is.numeric), names_to = "Variable") %>%
mutate(Species = forcats::fct_relabel(Species, stringr::str_to_title),
Variable = snakecase::to_title_case(Variable)) %>%
summarise(
M = mean(value, na.rm = TRUE),
SD = sd(value, na.rm = TRUE),
n = n(),
.by = c(Variable, Species)) %>%
# tabulator(rows = "Variable", columns = "Species") %>%
pivot_longer(c(M, SD,n)) %>%
unite(Species, Species, name) %>%
pivot_wider(names_from = Species) %>%
mutate(across(ends_with("_n"), .fns = as.integer))
# Where are the columns that end in _n?
ats <- match(colnames(d)[endsWith(colnames(d), "_n")], colnames(d))
# Insert break columns after _n variables
keys <- R.utils::insert(colnames(d),
ats = ats[-length(ats)] + 1,
values = paste0("break", 1:2))
# Flextable
flextable(d, col_keys = keys) %>%
colformat_double(digits = 2) %>%
separate_header() %>%
empty_blanks() %>%
align(align = "center", part = "all") %>%
align(j = 1, align = "left", part = "all") %>%
italic(i = 2, part = "header") %>%
set_table_properties(layout = "autofit", width = 1) %>%
apa_style()Variable |
Setosa |
Versicolor |
Virginica |
||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
M |
SD |
n |
M |
SD |
n |
M |
SD |
n |
|||
Sepal Length |
5.01 |
0.35 |
50 |
5.94 |
0.52 |
50 |
6.59 |
0.64 |
50 |
||
Sepal Width |
3.43 |
0.38 |
50 |
2.77 |
0.31 |
50 |
2.97 |
0.32 |
50 |
||
Petal Length |
1.46 |
0.17 |
50 |
4.26 |
0.47 |
50 |
5.55 |
0.55 |
50 |
||
Petal Width |
0.25 |
0.11 |
50 |
1.33 |
0.20 |
50 |
2.03 |
0.27 |
50 |
||
# gt
gt(d) %>%
fmt_number(decimals = 2, columns = is.double) %>%
tab_spanner_delim(delim = "_") %>%
cols_align(align = "center", columns = -1) %>%
tab_style(cell_text(style = "italic"), locations = cells_column_labels(-Variable)) %>%
tab_options(table.width = pct(100)) %>%
apa_style()| Variable |
Setosa
|
Versicolor
|
Virginica
|
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M | SD | n | M | SD | n | M | SD | n | |
| Petal Width | 0.25 | 0.11 | 50 | 1.33 | 0.20 | 50 | 2.03 | 0.27 | 50 |