nhanesSearchVarName function

Search for tables that contain a specified variable.

Returns a list of table names that contain the variable

nhanesSearchVarName(
  varname = NULL,
  ystart = NULL,
  ystop = NULL,
  includerdc = FALSE,
  nchar = 128,
  namesonly = TRUE
)

Arguments

• varname: Name of variable to match.
• ystart: Four digit year of first survey included in search, where ystart >= 1999.
• ystop: Four digit year of final survey included in search, where ystop >= ystart.
• includerdc: If TRUE then RDC only tables are included in list (default=FALSE).
• nchar: Truncates the variable description to a max length of nchar.
• namesonly: If TRUE then only the table names are returned (default=TRUE).

Returns

By default, a character vector of table names that include the specified variable is returned. If namesonly=FALSE, then a data frame of table attributes is returned.

Details

The NHANES Comprehensive Variable List is scanned to find all data tables that contain the given variable name. Only a single variable name may be entered, and only exact matches will be found.

Examples

bmxleg = nhanesSearchVarName('BMXLEG')
length(bmxleg)
bmxhead = nhanesSearchVarName('BMXHEAD', ystart=2003)
length(bmxhead)