How can I add labels to the groups of bars on the x- axis (which is the left side of the graph)? It is easy to label the entire axis, or to allow the labels to be generated based on the data, but I am unable to figure out how to label each group of bars, if that makes sense.

I know I could recode the item data into complete sentences, but that seems inelegant relative to making some change to the ggplot code.

I have tried using the code from a similar question on this site (

ETA something for the millionth time - I figured out what works for me, which is using

  ggtitle("How acceptable are each of the following scenarios to you?") 
  coord_flip()   
  geom_bar(position = "dodge", stat = "identity")   
  # facet_wrap(~item, scales = "free_x")     # changed
  scale_fill_manual(values=cbPalette)  
  # scale_fill_grey(start = 0.8, end = 0.2)  
  ylab("1 = highly unacceptable, 7 = highly acceptable")   
  xlab("")   
  theme_bw()  
  #theme(legend.position="bottom")  
  scale_x_discrete(breaks=c("none", "low", "moderatelow", "moderate", "greatest"),
                   labels=c("Control", "Treat 1", "Treat 2", "slkdj", "adkljf"))   
  labs(fill="reg")

Thank you so much to those of you who commented! Your help led me to the answer.

ETA - okay here I am, back again. It was pointed out to me by @Gregor Thomas that my scale limits are set incorrectly, along with the unnecessary nature of some of my code. This feedback is much appreciated. Using the guidance of commentors, I was able to resolve the labeling issue that existed.

But, now I cannot figure out how to adjust the limits of the axis in the new code format. Given the following, how can I set the scale from 1-7 to reflect the nature of the likert scale people responded to? See code below.

ggplot(mydata, aes(y = item, x = mean, fill = reg))   
  geom_col(position = "dodge")   
  scale_fill_manual(values = cbPalette)  
  scale_y_discrete(breaks=c("none", "low", "moderatelow", "moderate", "greatest"),
                   labels=c("No wolves", "Very low numbers of wolves", "Moderately low numbers of wolves", "Moderate numbers of wolves", "Greatest numbers of wolves that can be sustained")
  )   
  scale_x_continuous(expand = expansion(mult = c(0, .05)))  
  labs(
    title = "How acceptable are each of the following scenarios to you?",
    x = "1 = highly unacceptable, 7 = highly acceptable",
    y = "",
    fill = "population"
  )  
  theme_bw()  
  theme(
    legend.position = "bottom",
    panel.grid.major.y = element_blank()
  )

CodePudding user response：

Here's how I'd clean up your code. I skip the coord_flip, just mapping the x and y variables as desired. I consolidate all the labels into labs(), and I use scale_y_discrete(labels = ) for the labels.

my_labels = rev(paste("Scenario", LETTERS[1:5]))

ggplot(mydata, aes(y = item, x = mean, fill = reg))   
  geom_col(position = "dodge")   
  scale_fill_manual(values = cbPalette)  
  scale_y_discrete(
    labels = my_labels
  )   
  labs(
    title = "How acceptable are each of the following scenarios to you?",
    x = "1 = highly unacceptable, 7 = highly acceptable",
    y = "",
    fill = "population"
  )  
  theme_bw()  
  theme(legend.position = "bottom")

If this were my plot, I'd adjust the x-scale to remove the padding below 0, and I'd remove the y gridlines, like this:

ggplot(mydata, aes(y = item, x = mean, fill = reg))   
  geom_col(position = "dodge")   
  scale_fill_manual(values = cbPalette)  
  scale_y_discrete(
    labels = my_labels
  )   
  scale_x_continuous(expand = expansion(mult = c(0, .05)))  
  labs(
    title = "How acceptable are each of the following scenarios to you?",
    x = "1 = highly unacceptable, 7 = highly acceptable",
    y = "",
    fill = "population"
  )  
  theme_bw()  
  theme(
    legend.position = "bottom",
    panel.grid.major.y = element_blank()
  )

Though if 1 is "highly unacceptable", I don't know how to interpret 0... the whole x scale is seems confusing. Maybe you should set the x limits to be from 1 to 7, not 0 to max of data (which is 5)? If so, use scale_x_continuous(expand = expansion(mult = c(0, .05)), limits = c(1, 7)).

CodePudding user response：

We could add facet_grid(item ~ ., scales="free_y", space="free_y", switch="y")

ggplot(mydata, aes(x = item, y = mean, fill = reg))   
  ggtitle("How acceptable are each of the following scenarios to you?") 
  coord_flip()   
  geom_bar(position = "dodge", stat = "identity")   
  # facet_wrap(~item, scales = "free_x")     # changed
  scale_fill_manual(values=cbPalette)  
  # scale_fill_grey(start = 0.8, end = 0.2)  
  ylab("1 = highly unacceptable, 7 = highly acceptable")   
  xlab("")   
  theme_bw()  
  theme(legend.position="bottom")  
  scale_x_discrete(breaks = NULL)   
  labs(fill="population")  
  facet_grid(item ~ ., scales="free_y", space="free_y", switch="y")  
  guides(fill=FALSE)