Consolidate Overlapping Events

<< Click to Display Table of Contents >>

Navigation:  STRUCTURE Data Files > Optimize Events >

Consolidate Overlapping Events

This data sample shows a list of Events that have been coded with lexical chains for identifying the Subject and its Activity. The third column was created with the Move & Combine Codes routine to get the results on the Activities per Subject:

ConsolidateEvents_CominedDateSample

Looking at this data, the Timeline Chart and thus the resulting Statistics per DataSet as well as the Full statistics, show you all times where the Code Playing was coded:

ConsolidateEvents_TLC overlapping

The way INTERACT looks at all Events, the resulting duration for Playing also includes the overlapping part where this Code Playing was coded both for Subject A and B:

ConsolidateEvents_TLC DataSetStatistics

The Duration in seconds for Playing simply reflects the summary for the periods in which A, B and C where playing.

For some statistics this is great, for others, the overlapping of those Codes is problematic.

IMPORTANT: To make this work, the Codes of the Events to be consolidated, need to be available within the same Class and the Codes should, of course, be exactly the same.

Extract and consolidate

If you need the absolute totals for the times in which is being played, without counting the duration or frequencies caused by overlapping Events, this is what you can do:

Click Transform - Events - Merge Btn_MergeEvents> Create Events for specific repetitive Codes.

Select the Class and the Code you want to consolidate in the upcoming dialog.

Confirm with OK.

ConsolidateEvents_Dialog 1

The next dialog is left to 00:00:00:00 is in this case, because we do not want to merge successive Events, we just want to consolidate (partly) overlapping Events:

ConsolidateEvents_Dialog 2

Confirm with OK.

The results appear as new Events that contain the original Code ind a new Class (original Class name is extended by "_merged_in_0ms"".  

The new Code  reflects the actual period in which is being played. The overlapping section is not calculated twice:

ConsolidateEvents_TLCstats overlapping
TIP:Used the command Edit – Find & Replace - Replace btn_replaceto rename the "..._merged" Codes.