Custom Consolidation allows the aggregation of lowest level tables to create almost any reasonable higher level. Users define the consolidation scheme starting from the Standard consolidation, shown below.
Standard Consolidation would:
Retain each Urban and Rural (UR) table for each district in each province.
Add each group of UR tables to create a table for each district in each province.
Add each group of district tables to create a table for each province.
Add all province tables to create a single 'country' table.
The result of the consolidation is:
One Country table
A Province table for each province
A District table for each district in each province
One urban table and one rural table for each district in each province.
Each higher level is the aggregation of the levels below with the corresponding area code.
Using custom consolidation, you can produce tables at only the levels you wish. For example, if you did not want to produce tables at the district level but wanted to continue producing them for province, urban/rural and entire country; you would simply remove the district row:
Using Custom Consolidation you can also create user-defined schemes for combining the lowest level tables by adding new rows to the consolidation scheme:
Each row of the scheme must have a CSPro 'name' for the set of tables to be created, listed under Area Level Name above.
In the example above, the following tables would be created:
One Country table
One urban table and one rural table for the entire country
A Province table for each province
One urban table and one rural table for each province
A District table for each district in each province
One urban table and one rural table for each district in each province.
In addition, you may place conditions in the cells of the consolidation scheme grid. These conditions are used to modify how the tables replaced for a given level (the column) are consolidated for a particular consolidation scheme (row).
The options are:
Blank – Any code in this position is included.
Each – Each different code in this position creates a separate table.
Single value – One table created for this value of the area level
Replacement formula – One 'summary' is table created for all areas that the meet the condition and the replacement code is substituted for the area code for the summary table. [start:end = replacement]
The last two options are illustrated by the following example:
The TOT_URB table will include all tallies that had a value of '1' for the UR area level. The area codes on this table will be Province=X, District=X, UR= 1.
The PROV_1_4 table will include all tallies that had Province codes of 1 through 4. The area codes for this table will be Province=99, District=X, UR= X. Since other province codes are 1 to 15, the table associated with '99' would be displayed after any for those coded. (In the example above NO province tables were created hence they are not displayed)
In order to use these codes – a corresponding name should be in the area name file.
Note: When custom consolidation is used it is the user's responsibility to make sure the consolidation scheme is reasonable and that it works in the desired manner. As usual, every aspect of a data processing system should be tested for correctness.