Identify rows of post-baccalaureate terms

Provides a means of excluding post-baccalaureate terms by adding a column of term-status labels identifying pre- and post-baccalaureate terms.

Usage

add_post_bacc(dframe, midfield_degree = degree)

Arguments

dframe

Working data frame of student-level records to which a term-status column is to be added. Required variables are mcid and a single term variable.

midfield_degree

MIDFIELD degree data table or equivalent with required variables mcid and term_degree.

Value

A data frame with the following properties: rows are preserved; columns first_degree_term and term_status are added or overwritten; all other columns are preserved. Grouping structures are not necessarily preserved. The added columns are:

first_degree_term

Character. Term of a student's first baccalaureate, encoded YYYYT — or NA if no degree recorded.

term_status

Character. Possible values are "pre-bacc", "first-degree", and "post-first-degree".

An attempt is made to return data frames of the same class as the input, so a data.table input should produce a data.table output, a tibble input should produce a tibble output, etc. Grouped tibbles, however, are returned as data.frames. To help ensure a tibble output, try ungrouping a tibble before using it as an input argument.

Details

In a typical analysis, one is interested in a student's progress up to and including the term in which they earn their first degree or degrees. Any terms later than the first baccalaureate can usually be excluded from study.

The input dframe must have a term variable with one of three possible names: term (from the term data table), term_course (from the course data table), or term_degree (from the degree data table).

add_post_bacc() determines a student's first degree term (if any) from midfield_degree, adds that column to dframe, and adds a second column of term-status labels identifying pre- and post-baccalaureate terms.

Examples

# Examples TBD
x <- 1