DataCombine (version 0.1.23)

StartEnd: Find the starting and ending time points of a spell

Description

StartEnd finds the starting and ending time points of a spell, including for time-series cross-sectional data. Note: your data needs to be sorted by date. The date should be ascending (i.e. increasing as it moves down the rows).

Usage

StartEnd(data, SpellVar, GroupVar, SpellValue = NULL)

Arguments

data

a data frame object.

SpellVar

a character string naming the variable you would like to slide (create lag or lead).

GroupVar

a character string naming the variable grouping the units experiencing the spells. If GroupVar = NULL then .

SpellValue

a value indicating when a unit is in a spell. If SpellValue = NULL then any change in Var's value will be treated as the start/end of a spell.

Value

• a data frame with two new variables:
  • Spell_Start:
  {The time period year of a given spell.}
• Spell_End:
  The end time period of a given spell.

See Also

slide

Examples

# Create fake data
ID <- sort(rep(seq(1:4), 5))
Time <- rep(1:5, 4)
Dummy <-  sample(c(0, 1), size = 20, replace = TRUE)
Data <- data.frame(ID, Time, Dummy)

# Find start/end of spells denoted by Dummy = 1
DataSpell <- StartEnd(Data, SpellVar = 'Dummy', GroupVar = 'ID',
                     SpellValue = 1)

head(DataSpell)