Volume 15 - Article 7 | Pages 181–252  

A general temporal data model and the structured population event history register

By Samuel J. Clark

Abstract

At this time there are 37 demographic surveillance system sites active in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Central America, and this number is growing continuously. These sites and other longitudinal population and health research projects generate large quantities of complex temporal data in order to describe, explain and investigate the event histories of individuals and the populations they constitute.
This article presents possible solutions to some of the key data management challenges associated with those data. The fundamental components of a temporal system are identified and both they and their relationships to each other are given simple, standardized definitions. Further, a metadata framework is proposed to endow this abstract generalization with specific meaning and to bind the definitions of the data to the data themselves.
The result is a temporal data model that is generalized, conceptually tractable, and inherently contains a full description of the primary data it organizes. Individual databases utilizing this temporal data model can be customized to suit the needs of their operators without modifying the underlying design of the database or sacrificing the potential to transparently share compatible subsets of their data with other similar databases. A practical working relational database design based on this general temporal data model is presented and demonstrated.
This work has arisen out of experience with demographic surveillance in the developing world, and although the challenges and their solutions are more general, the discussion is organized around applications in demographic surveillance. An appendix contains detailed examples and working prototype databases that implement the examples discussed in the text.

Author's Affiliation

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Male and female sterility in Zambia
Volume 30 - Article 14

The age pattern of increases in mortality affected by HIV: Bayesian fit of the Heligman-Pollard Model to data from the Agincourt HDSS field site in rural northeast South Africa
Volume 29 - Article 39

Estimates of Age-Specific Reductions in HIV Prevalence in Uganda: Bayesian Melding Estimation and Probabilistic Population Forecast with an HIV-enabled Cohort Component Projection Model
Volume 27 - Article 26

Estimating trends in the total fertility rate with uncertainty using imperfect data: Examples from West Africa
Volume 26 - Article 15

More on the Cohort-Component Model of Population Projection in the Context of HIV/AIDS: A Leslie Matrix Representation and New Estimates
Volume 25 - Article 2

Toward a Unified Timestamp with explicit precision
Volume 12 - Article 6

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

Multiple (il)legal pathways: The diversity of immigrants' legal trajectories in Belgium
Volume 47 - Article 10    | Keywords: Belgium, immigration, integration, legal status, population register, sequence analysis, trajectories

Classifying multiple ethnic identifications: Methodological effects on child, adolescent, and adult ethnic distributions
Volume 44 - Article 21    | Keywords: ethnic classification, ethnic measurement, ethnicity, methods, multiple ethnicities, race/ethnicity

Trends in living arrangements and their impact on the mortality of older adults: Belgium 1991‒2012
Volume 43 - Article 15    | Keywords: Belgium, living arrangements, long-term trends, mortality, older adults, population register, second demographic transition

IRS county-to-county migration data, 1990‒2010
Volume 40 - Article 40    | Keywords: database, Internal Revenue Service (IRS), migration, R

A new look at the housing antecedents of separation
Volume 40 - Article 26    | Keywords: family stability, gender, housing, longitudinal analysis, partnerships, separation, United Kingdom

Cited References: 24

Download to Citation Manager

PubMed

Google Scholar

Volume
Page
Volume
Article ID