[Babase] Psion jpsamps and fpsamps in wrong tables

kfenn kfenn at princeton.edu
Fri Mar 2 12:44:37 EST 2007


Hi Everyone,

I'm going to open a can of worms that has been opened before, but we 
need some input from Duke about current psion protocol and possible a 
programmed "rule" to help clean up the psamps tables for users.

The babase email archives document a decision made about what to do when 
juvenile psion samples end up in adult psion samples and vice versa.  
I'm going to paraphrase the protocol that Susan proposed in April 2005 
email with the subject heading Psion Miscoding Issue - Jeanne Please 
Read.  You can go to the archives to read the complete email exchange.

The errors in question were:
 >/(1) male samples in the fpsamps table (8 out of 15,269 samples) /
 >/(2) non-adult female samples in the fpsamps table (56 out of 15,269 
samples)
/>/(3) adults in the jpsamps table (96 out of 8,100 samples) /

Susan responded:
/>>In response to Catherine's question about whether we still want to 
discard samples in the three categories she lists below, I would say YES 
for the first two types but NO for the third type for 75% of them. Toss 
only those where the sample occurred more than a year after maturity. /

Following these protocols, presumably all juvenile females have been 
removed and continue to be removed from the fpsamps table.  However, the 
allowances in the jpsamps table have created problems for users like 
Laurence.   If there is no rule enforcing membership in only the adult 
table after a maturedate is listed, then the individual can 'jump' back 
and forth between adult and juvenile tables for potentially up to a year 
if the field team and/or data managers are not vigilant.  Anyone trying 
to use these data risk not capturing all the available data if they only 
search one table or the other.   VEX is one example of this problem.

Even if we caution people that this is an existing condition of the 
database, its hard to give users a simple work around ......you cannot 
reliable say that once an individual has moved from the juvenile table 
to the adult table (even if this doesn't prefectly coincide with 
maturedate), henceforth it will always been found in the adult table.  
'Maturity' is a slow process so I can see allowing recently matured 
individuals to remain in juvenile samples for a while, but once an 
animal is moved to the adult table, it seems important that they should 
remain there.

Duke folks, please weigh in on this and clarify any protocols I've 
misrepresented or make suggestions for whether some sort of data input 
rule makes sense here.

Thanks,
Tabby

-- 
Tabby Fenn
Research Assistant

Dept of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
401 Guyot Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ  08544

609 258-6898 (Ph)
609 258-2712 (Fx)



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