Create new variable based on a condition across multiple columns

Question

I have a binary variable ("Penalty") and 30 factors with the same levels: "Discharge", "Suspended", "Fine", "Community order", and "Imprisonment".

A small example:

ID	Possession	Importation	Production	Penalty
1	Fine	NA	Fine	Yes
2	NA	NA	Community order	No
3	Discharge	Discharge	NA	No
4	NA	NA	Suspended	Yes
5	Imprisonment	NA	NA	No
6	Fine	NA	Imprisonment	No

I would like to create a new factor based on the same condition across these columns plus the binary variable and where there are differing levels in the same row would like the new variable 'sentence' to retain the levels with this priority: Imprisonment > Community order, Suspended > Fine > Discharge. e.g. Discharge will only be present in the new column where no other level appears.

Desired output:

ID	Possession	Importation	Production	Penalty	Sentence
1	Fine	NA	Fine	Yes	Fine
2	NA	NA	Community order	No	Community order
3	Discharge	Discharge	NA	No	Discharge
4	NA	NA	Suspended	Yes	Suspended
5	Imprisonment	NA	NA	No	Imprisonment
6	Fine	NA	Imprisonment	No	Imprisonment

This is what I have attempted: (where "vec" is a vector of the factor column indices)

data <- data %>%
  mutate(
    crim_sanct = case_when(
      (if_any(vec) == "Discharge") ~ "Discharge",
      (if_any(vec) == "Fine") | (data$Penalty == "Yes") ~ "Fine",
      (if_any(vec) ==  "Suspended") ~ "Suspended",
      (if_any(vec) ==  "Community order") ~ "Community order",
      (if_any(vec) ==  "Imprisonment") ~ "imprisonment"))

Answer 1

You are in the right direction but have some small syntax issues in if_any.

Also in case_when you need to put the conditions based on the priority. So if Imprisonment > Community order then Imprisonment condition should come first before Community order.

library(dplyr)

data <- data %>%
  mutate(
    crim_sanct = 
      case_when(
      if_any(Possession:Production, ~. ==  "Imprisonment") ~ "imprisonment",
      if_any(Possession:Production, ~ . == "Discharge") ~ "Discharge",
      if_any(Possession:Production,  ~. ==  "Suspended") ~ "Suspended",
      if_any(Possession:Production, ~. == "Fine") | (Penalty == "Yes") ~ "Fine",
      if_any(Possession:Production, ~. ==  "Community order") ~ "Community order")
)
data

#  ID   Possession Importation      Production Penalty      crim_sanct
#1  1         Fine        <NA>            Fine     Yes            Fine
#2  2         <NA>        <NA> Community order      No Community order
#3  3    Discharge   Discharge            <NA>      No       Discharge
#4  4         <NA>        <NA>       Suspended     Yes       Suspended
#5  5 Imprisonment        <NA>            <NA>      No    imprisonment
#6  6         Fine        <NA>    Imprisonment      No    imprisonment