MEPS Data Scraping

A product of Get Better With Data Team 4

Get Better With Data Hackathon - Team 4 Cleaning - Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Scraping

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Using the data

All data is located in the /data folder as CSV files. There are two types:

• Non-Enhanced: Raw data converted from MEPS into a plain CSV
• Enhanced: Values for flags added to the dataset

Using the scripts

To fetch more data from MEPS, you need R. The important functions are located in /scripts/puf_download.R. You can download data for any dataset if you have the PUF (ex: HC-175E). An example usage is as follows:

short_puf <- shorten_puf("HC-175E")
download_puf(short_puf)
# The file h175e.csv will be created in the current directory

All PUF files, regardless of what dataset they come from, can be downloaded through this command.