Helper to validate_inputs(). This function accepts arguments relating
to how treatment waves are assigned, and checks if they are valid, and if all
supporting arguments are passed as necessary.
check_assign_method(assignment_method, time_unit, verbose, period_length)Throws an error if the user is missing necessary arguments to assign treatments or passes invalid ones.
A character string; one of "date", "batch", or "individual", to define the assignment into treatment waves. When using "batch" or "individual", ensure your dataset is pre-arranged in the proper order observations should be considered so that groups are assigned correctly. For "date", observations will be considered in chronological order. "individual" assignment can be computationally intensive for larger datasets.
A character string specifying the unit of time for assigning periods when assignment_method is "date".
Acceptable values are "day", "week", or "month". "month" does not require an additional column with the months of each observation,
but it can accept a separate month_col. If month_col is specified, the periods follow the calendar months strictly, and when it is not
specified months are simply used as the time interval. For example if a dataset has dates starting on July 26th, under month based assignment and
a specified month_col the dates July 26th and August 3st would be in different periods, but if the month_col was not specified, they would be
in the same period because the dates are less than one month apart.
Logical; whether or not to print intermediate messages. Default is FALSE.
A numeric value of length 1; represents the length of each treatment period.
If assignment method is "date", this length refers the number of units specified in time_unit
(i.e., if "day", 10 would be 10 days). If assignment method is "batch", this refers to the number of people in each batch.