[Babase] Dcause
Susan Alberts
babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Fri, 7 May 2004 14:47:48 -0400
Some thoughts on Daphne's email, but these should not necessarily be
the last word.
>1) There were already quite a few individuals with a status of 1 and a
>dcause of 0 (in the old list - before I changed the pre-01b dcauses to
>0). I imagine this will be a problem since we are doing this update of
>dcauses to avoid having 0s in the dcause column. I Do we want to just
>make them all 7s (unknown), or try to assign real dcauses to them?
One approach would be to (1) find the list of dcauses that Jeanne and
Jessica assigned that have not yet been entered into babase but do
exist under the new coding scheme (we talked about these on the phone
yesterday). These should be entered asap. (2) Give everyone else that
currently has a 0 dcause and a status of 1 an unknown dcause (7).
This would expedite getting dcauses that HAVE been assigned into
babase but would not bog us down with the assigning itself (in the
case of those animals that haven't been assigned), and it would allow
Karl to go forward with out worrying about this error, which
potentially seems like an upstream error. If we go this route we
will need to make sure that we clarify, on our list of "errors not
yet corrected", exactly which individuals we have and have not
assigned a final accurate dcause to.
>2) There are many individuals with a status of 2 or 3 that have
>dcauses. We haven't been using status codes other than 1 lately, but
>they're in there for the older data. Do we want these to have dcauses,
>or not? Most, but not all, seem to be 4s (old unknown).
But, I thought that all the old codings were taken out of biograph
after I asked about this last year? Whatever else happen right now I
think we need to be very sure that only ONE coding scheme is
represented in the dcause column. Has this not happened? I thought it
had.
>3)
>
>> To clarify: abortions have a (new) dcause of either 4 or 7.
>> (5 is not used for abortions, right?)
>
>We have been using 7 (new unknown) for aborts (I have a note on the
>dcause definition list from a conversation with Jeanne and Susan about
>this). Karl, I'm not sure if you mean old 4 or new 4. Old 4 was
>unknown. New 4 is pathology/congenital problems, which to my knowledge
>we have not used for aborts. What were the rules that you had for
>dcauses of aborts, Karl? So I think we are using 7 for aborts, except
>potentially for cases when the abort is due to the death of the mother
>(see below).
>
>4) The situation that needs clarifying is when the fetus dies because
>the mother dies. At the beginning of the new dcause definition list, it
>says the following:
>
>If a mother and infant disappear at the same time and a cause is
>attributed to the mother's death, the same cause is attributed to the
>infant's death unless contraindicated by available evidence.
>
>When Jeanne and Suan and I talked about dcauses earlier, and it was
>decided that this applied to infants AND fetuses (I have another note
>about this on the sheet). Do we want to stick with this? As I see it,
>this would have 2 implications. First, it would mean that aborts, if
>they are due to the mom's death, would NOT be restricted to certain
>dcauses - they could get whatever dcause was assigned to the mother.
>Second, it means that an infant (or fetus, if that's what we decide)
>would not get a dcause of 5 (loss of mother in both old and new lists)
>unless the mother's cause of death is unknown. (Right? Am I
>interpreting this correctly?) So I think there are some 5s for infants
>(and maybe fetuses) that should have the mother's dcause instead.
>Steph, I think it would be a good idea to check for these 5s, both in
>the pre-01b list I'm sending you, and in the post-01b data currently in
>Biograph, and see if they shouldn't get the mother's dcause instead.
Daphne, this was very helpful, thanks. When the three of us talked
about it last year I didn't really realize all the implications.
Jeanne, you have thought about this a lot more than me and came up
with the definitions. What do you advise?
Susan
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Susan Alberts, Assistant Professor
Department of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338, Durham NC 27708
phone 919-660-7272 fax 919-660-7293