Christine:
Perhaps two different legal values for the second date, eg:
01/01/1800 for missing 01/01/2050 for ongoing
then you get a negative interval for missing and too large an interval for ongoing, then in Analysis, you exclude the negatives and give a single value for all that are too large to graph the curve or perhaps better exclude them as well. If new information on BETTER comes in, it is easy to search for the value for ongoing in EpiData Entry.
...or something the like,
Hans
epidata-list@lists.umanitoba.ca wrote:
I would appreciate it if those working with outbreaks could reply about how they enter and display "ongoing" duration of illness. I have been given an Excel sheet to analyse in Epidata. For this outbreak people were asked the date and time when they became unwell and the date and time when they felt better. There is a calculated field in the spreadsheet that calculates duration in days (date better - date unwell), but for some people this is empty because "ongoing" has been entered as text in the "date better" field. I want to modify the Excel sheet so I include those people with 'ongoing' illness in an epidemic curve.
I thought I could enter a date sometime in the future instead of 'ongoing' This would mean the duration days would not be blank, but a number of days well beyond the maximum value for those whose illness is finished. What do others do?
thanks
Christine