7 Extensions

clusteR is built for epidemiologists in local, regional, or state health departments to manage a cluster-sampled survey. These surveys may have varied study designs, outreach strategies, and analytic schemes. With that variability in mind, clusteR is modular, and will work with custom functions and scripts to support unique needs.

The author’s crystal ball can’t predict all uses of clusteR. In places where there is no modular support, you can write new functions to access and modify the files directly as needed.

The areas where clusteR supports extensions are:

• The selection of custom clusters
• Additional variables during setup that are added to .cluster$cfg when clusteR is loaded
• Custom cluster grouping methods for use with make_groups
• Custom data sources to access with get_data
• Functions to implement custom weighting schemes
• Custom templates for make_walklist, view_topline, and view_breakdown

If you develop an interesting extension for clusteR, please let us know so we can list and describe it here.