[Babase] Re: Bstatus Zero vs. Blank

Jeanne Altmann babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Sat, 16 Apr 2005 12:45:36 -0400


Hi all,
I finally stopped to think a bit more about Bstatus and to remember its 
origins.  Susan please correct and give input on the following:

1.  Bstatus was a product of and a field in Susan's male file when we 
imported it into BABASE when BABASE was created in the mid-90's.  It was 
created with non-natal males in mind, and I don't think we ever thought of 
it in terms of study group natal animals, though we never clarified 
that.  No such field was in my natal files that were also imported into 
BABASE.  When I did analyses such as gestation length, etc, I just used 
animals born after the study began and also excluded the few others that I 
might need to for various levels of precision.  As we've now discovered, we 
did not implement Bstatus retroactively for those individuals before the 
study began, and we did not consider the gaps of a month or less 
particularly in the early 90's.

1.  I suggest that we now code all natal animals that were in study groups 
when we began (females and immature males if the latter were not already 
scored by Susan) using the current scheme.  I should be able to do that 
pretty readily.

2.  I will look at the other periods that Catherine identifies and consider 
how best to handle any births during those periods with the existing coding 
(they will be 0 or 1), either by scoring or come back with at least a 
suggestion to solve the immediate need some other way.  I think all of 
these will be ok for survival analyses but not all for 
gestation/reproductive analyses (as Catherine pointed out, they relate to 
the cycle gaps that we are implementing).

Comments?

jeanne


At 01:20 PM 4/15/2005, you wrote:

>On 04/14/2005 02:51:35 PM, Jeanne Altmann wrote:
>>To avoid duplications of effort, a quick report:
>>Do we want to add other categories (i.e. between 0 and 1) ?
>>Karl, can we readily add an earliest and latest date as discussed for
>>cycles?
>
>Well, yes and no.  I'd want to think and ask questions about
>when they'd be used.  Particularly regards various rule checking.
>
>I guess the answer is not readily enough that I want to do it
>before we get the new system up.
>
>Karl <kop@meme.com>
>Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
>                 -- Robert A. Heinlein
>
>
>
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