[Babase] Question about statdates and conversion errors

Leah Gerber babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Wed, 31 Aug 2005 15:36:45 -0400


Hello Susan, Jeanne, Karl, and Catherine,

While going through some of the conversion errors an issue about 
statdates has come up. Some older statdates have been calculated as the 
midpoint between the last day an individual was marked present in a 
census and the first day the individual was marked absent in the next 
census of the same group. The definition for statdate when an 
individual is alive and absent in last census (Figure 12 in the 
documentation on interpolation) states that the statdate should be the 
last day where the individual is censused as present. When fixing 
conversion errors should I correct these dates to reflect the current 
definition of statdate? If we decide to correct some this way should I 
also go through all individuals that may have these midpoint statdates 
and correct them as well?

Thanks for any thoughts on this,

Leah