popdevr-data-analysis

Data Analysis (popdevr-data-analysis)

PDR reviewers are expert demographers and development scholars, and the journal expects analyses that are reproducible and interpretable to a broad readership. Analyze as if a methodologist will re-derive your rates and an economist will ask what each number means for development — because both may. This skill covers execution and reporting norms; method choice lives in popdevr-research-design.

When to trigger

• Constructing rates and life tables; building the results section
• Running a decomposition, event-history, APC, or projection analysis
• A reviewer asked for robustness, sensitivity, or alternative specifications
• Making the analysis reproducible and its development meaning explicit before deposit

Analysis norms PDR expects

1. Get the denominators right. Exposure (person-years), the correct base population, and age/period alignment are where demographic analyses live or die. Document how rates were built.
2. Report uncertainty honestly. Confidence/credible intervals for rates, life-expectancy contributions, projection scenarios, and derived quantities — not just point estimates or stars. Bootstrap or delta-method intervals for decomposition components and life-table functions.
3. Decomposition with clear components. State precisely what each component (rate vs. composition, age contribution, factor) represents and which maps to a development channel; ensure components sum to the total being explained.
4. APC discipline. Be explicit about the identification problem; report under the stated constraint and show sensitivity to plausible alternatives — never imply a unique decomposition.
5. Survival/event-history rigor. Check proportional hazards; handle censoring, truncation, and competing risks correctly; report on the right time scale (age, duration, period).
6. Right inference for the data. Survey/design weights and complex-design variance where applicable; cluster at the appropriate level; small-sample corrections when groups (e.g., countries) are few.
7. Make the development meaning explicit. For each headline quantity, say what it implies for the social, economic, or environmental outcome — the PDR bar is not a clean estimate alone.

Demographic and comparative computation specifics

• Document data version/vintage (e.g., HMD/HFD/WPP release, DHS round), harmonization steps, and any smoothing/graduation applied to rates.
• For projections: report the scenarios, base population, transition-rate assumptions, and sensitivity; tie scenarios to development or policy futures where that is the contribution.
• For cross-country work: be explicit about comparability (definitions, coverage, data quality) before reading a cross-national contrast as a development effect.

Reproducibility while you work (not at the end)

• One master script regenerates every table, figure, life table, decomposition, and projection from the (raw or constructed) data.
• Set and report seeds for bootstrap and simulation.
• Pin software/package versions (renv.lock, requirements.txt, recorded ssc/net installs).
• Keep table/figure numbers in the manuscript matched to script outputs (see popdevr-transparency-and-data).

Anti-patterns

• Mismatched numerator/denominator or wrong exposure (the classic demographic error)
• Point estimates of life expectancy, decomposition components, or projections with no uncertainty
• An APC model presented as the uniquely correct partition
• Reading a cross-country correlation as a development effect without addressing comparability
• A results section whose rates and decompositions the code cannot reproduce

Evidence pass for PDR

Run this as a concrete capability pass. First lock the population process, the development/policy linkage, the data and time scale, the selection/measurement issue, and the uncertainty; then test whether the manuscript addresses PDR's broad audience who inspect both the population evidence and its development meaning.

• Primary move: Audit unit, comparison, uncertainty, missingness, sensitivity, comparability, and reproducibility before making any prose or submission recommendation.
• Decision ledger: return claim / evidence / blocker / next edit rows so the next pass can patch the manuscript directly.
• Sibling comparison: compare against Demography and Population Studies (methods-forward), Population Research and Policy Review (applied policy), and Studies in Family Planning (programs); if a neighbor has the stronger audience claim, recommend re-routing before polishing.
• Verification floor: before submission-ready advice, re-open resources/official-source-map.md for volatile rules and name the one unresolved fact that could change the recommendation.

Output format

【Main quantity】rate / e0 / decomposition / hazard / projection + magnitude + interval
【Development meaning】what it implies for the social/economic/environmental outcome
【Exposure / denominator check】correctly constructed? [Y/N]
【Decomposition】components defined + sum to total? [Y/N/NA]
【APC / comparability】constraint stated / cross-country comparability addressed? [Y/N/NA]
【Inference】weights/clustering/competing risks handled? [Y/N]
【Reproducible】master script + seeds + pinned versions? [Y/N]
【Next】popdevr-tables-figures

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — life-table, decomposition, survival, APC, and projection packages
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — data-availability and reproducibility expectations