I’m trying to get my bar plot to change the order of the labels. I’m trying to get the labels to show up in the order of the bars. Therefore, I’d like the order to be w1, w2, w3. What am I missing? Below is code example:

rm(list = ls())
library(ggplot2)
library(tidyr)
library(tidyverse)

df <- data.frame(
  experience = c("C Exp", "C Exp", "No E Exp", "No E Exp", "Other E Exp", "Other E Exp"),
  overall_rec = c("Agree", "Disagree", "Agree", "Disagree", "Agree", "Disagree"),
  pct_overall_w1 = c(0.6326530612, 0.3673469388, 0.8604651163, 0.1395348837, 0.7465277778, 0.2534722222),
  pct_overall_w2 = c(0.05882352941, 0.9411764706, 0.06097560976, 0.9390243902, 0.05211726384, 0.9478827362),
  pct_overall_w3 = c(0.04615384615, 0.9538461538, 0.1, 0.9, 0.08076009501, 0.919239905)
)

# Filter the data frame to include only rows where overall_rec = Agree
df_filtered <- subset(df, overall_rec == "Agree") %>% 
  gather(key = "pct_overall", value = "percentage", pct_overall_w1:pct_overall_w3) %>% 
  ungroup() %>% 
  select(experience, pct_overall, percentage) %>% 
  arrange(experience)

df_filtered$pct_overall <- factor(df_filtered$pct_overall, levels = c("pct_overall_w3", "pct_overall_w2", "pct_overall_w1"))


# Create the dodged bar chart with updated legend labels and percentage labels
ggplot(df_filtered, aes(x = experience, y = percentage, fill = pct_overall)) +
  geom_bar(stat = "identity", position = "dodge") +
  labs(title = "Percentage of Overall Recommendation by Experience",
       x = "Experience",
       y = "Percentage",
       fill = "Recommendation") +
  scale_fill_manual(values = c("#1f77b4", "#2ca02c", "#d62728"),
                    labels = c("w3", "w2", "w1")) +
  geom_text(aes(label = paste0(round(percentage * 100), "%")), 
            position = position_dodge(width = 0.9), 
            vjust = -0.5, 
            size = 3) +
  theme_classic() +
  coord_flip()

>Solution :

One option would be to reverse the order of the legend using guide_legend(reverse=TRUE):

library(ggplot2)

ggplot(df_filtered, aes(x = percentage, y = experience, fill = pct_overall)) +
  geom_bar(stat = "identity", position = "dodge") +
  labs(
    title = "Percentage of Overall Recommendation by Experience",
    x = "Experience",
    y = "Percentage",
    fill = "Recommendation"
  ) +
  scale_fill_manual(
    values = c("#1f77b4", "#2ca02c", "#d62728"),
    labels = c("w3", "w2", "w1")
  ) +
  geom_text(aes(label = paste0(round(percentage * 100), "%")),
    position = position_dodge(width = 0.9),
    hjust = -0.5,
    size = 3
  ) +
  theme_classic() +
  guides(fill = guide_legend(reverse = TRUE))