Format a Flextable in Accordance with APA 7th Standards

This function takes a flextable object, and applies APA 7th standard style formatting to it.
The initial idea for this function stems from Remi Theriault's Blog.
Reference on what APA style for tables constitutes can be obtained on the apastyle.apa.org website. See also the very neat packages flextable and read_docx, by David Gohel and Colleagues, which enables us to get our publication ready tables directly into MS Word.

Usage

format_flextable(
  ft,
  font = "Times New Roman",
  fontsize = 12,
  table_caption = c("Table x", "Some Description of the Table"),
  table_note = NA,
  italize_stats = TRUE,
  linespacing = 1.25,
  ...
)

Arguments

ft

A flextable object (prefered) or data.frame, to be formatted in accordance with APA. Required!

font

Default is "Times New Roman", can be changed to your needs (e.g., "Arial")

fontsize

Default is 12, bigger font size is not recommended.

table_caption

Takes a character vector. Note: when provided NA no caption will be placed! Recommend are the following elements

Table + number (e.g., "Table 1")
The description, use APA capital case (e.g., "Sociodemographic Characteristics of the Total Sample")

table_note

Takes a character vector. Will automatically prepend Note if not present. Default is NA (no table note). e.g., is c("Explanation of Abbreviations", "* p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001"). Please note that you will need to manually set the formatting (i.e., setting italic for p values).

italize_stats

Boolean, default is TRUE. Searches the header for common statistic symbols (e.g. p N SD M) and sets font to italic

linespacing

Points of Linespacing defaults to 1.25, APA would be 1.5 or 2

...

(Optional) Additional Parameters, not utiliezd in this function, enables passing from passing of previous functions

Value

An APA style formatted flextable object.

Author

Bjoern Buedenbender / Remi Theriault