Trying to loop through different surveys in Python

January 25, 2022

I’m trying to loop through different sections in my survey in python to calculate the total time taken to answer each specific section (there are three sections: Warehouse, psychometrics and healthcare).

My data is in a csv format and for each section in the survey, time data is displayed in 9 columns that start with a common suffix (ie, ‘sectionname’.timedata). So to calculate the time spent in each section, I wrote a line of code which sums up all the values in those columns for the specific section:

Surveyresp['Warehouse_time'] = Surveyresp[[col for col in Surveyresp.columns if col.startswith('Warehouse.timedata')]].sum(axis=1)

Surveyresp['Psychometrics_time'] = Surveyresp[[col for col in Surveyresp.columns if col.startswith('Psychometric.timedata')]].sum(axis=1)

Surveyresp['Healthcare_time'] = Surveyresp[[col for col in Surveyresp.columns if col.startswith('Healthcare.timedata')]].sum(axis=1)

My question is, is there a way I can just loop through these 3 surveys to make this change?

I tried starting the loop:

Surveys = ['Warehouse.timedata', 'Psychometric.timedata']

for i in Surveys:
   print(i)
   Surveyresp['i_time'] = Surveyresp[[col for col in Surveyresp.columns if col.startswith('i')]].sum(axis=1)

But all this loop does is create one new variable (that is, ‘i_time’). What am I doing wrong with this loop?

Thanks!

>Solution :

Your idea of the loop was almost correct. 🙂

Surveys = ['Warehouse.timedata', 'Psychometric.timedata']

for i in Surveys:
   print(i)
   collum_name = i.split(".")
   Surveyresp[] = Surveyresp[[col for col in Surveyresp.columns if col.startswith('i')]].sum(axis=1)

But it should look like this to correctly loop over all columns