Combining & and | statements in case_when function

Question

I have a df "DISC_CONS_Reports" with 6 columns, each with 2 or more factors.

I want to do something very simple, adding a column named 'State' with value 'Conscious_pure' when column 1 contains the string 'yes' AND columns 3 OR 5 OR 6 contain a certain string. I'm new in R, I used the case_when function as follows but it doesn't output what I expected, i.e., it treats the first logical statement (ROR1.Conscious?== "yes" &) as an OR, assigning 'conscious_pure' also to those subjects for which I have in col 1 value 'no' but which contain in at least one of the other cols one of the specified strings (e.g. 'dreaming', 'thinking' etc.):

ROR1_states <- DISC_CONS_Reports %>%
  mutate(State=case_when(
    `ROR1.Conscious?`== "yes" &
      `ROR1.Self-reported_State` == 'dreaming' |
      `ROR1.Focus_of_experience` == 'environment' |
      `ROR1.Focus_of_experience` == 'myself' |
      `ROR1.Visual_or_Thinking` == 'thinking' |
      `ROR1.Visual_or_Thinking` == 'seeing' |
      `ROR1.Visual_or_Thinking` == 'NA' ~ "Conscious_pure",
      `ROR1.Conscious?`=="not arousable (i.e., Disconnected Consciousness ?)" ~ "Not Arousable"))

I would like instead to assign "Conscious_pure" only to those subjects for which ROR1.Conscious?`== "yes" is TRUE AND also at least one of the other conditions (i.e., dreaming,environment, myself, thinking, seeing etc)

Answer 1

You should be able to do this by putting parentheses around the or statements, thus evaluating them as a group first before evaluating the and condition.

ROR1_states <- DISC_CONS_Reports %>%
  mutate(State=case_when(
    `ROR1.Conscious?`== "yes" & (
      `ROR1.Self-reported_State` == 'dreaming' |
      `ROR1.Focus_of_experience` == 'environment' |
      `ROR1.Focus_of_experience` == 'myself' |
      `ROR1.Visual_or_Thinking` == 'thinking' |
      `ROR1.Visual_or_Thinking` == 'seeing' |
      `ROR1.Visual_or_Thinking` == 'NA') ~ "Conscious_pure",
    `ROR1.Conscious?`=="not arousable (i.e., Disconnected Consciousness ?)" ~ "Not Arousable"))

One other thing to note, is that if ROR1.Visual_or_Thinking has a string values "NA", then this will work. If the last equality in your or statements is evaluating for a missing value NA, then you need to replace

`ROR1.Visual_or_Thinking` == 'NA'

with

is.na(`ROR1.Visual_or_Thinking`)

Since I don't have access to your data, I don't know if this solves all the problems, but it should give you a place to start.