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Combine multiple netify objects

Source: R/bind_netifies.R
bind_netifies.Rd

bind_netifies() concatenates two or more netify objects along the time axis (for combining cross-sec → longit, or stacking two longit panels into a longer one). All inputs must share the same mode (unipartite / bipartite), symmetry, layers, and (for cross-sec inputs) the same actor set. Actor sets across periods may differ — the result is a longit_list.

Usage

bind_netifies(
  ...,
  names = NULL,
  align_actors = c("none", "union", "intersection")
)

Arguments

...

Two or more netify objects, or a single list of netify objects.

names

Optional character vector to name the resulting periods. If NULL, periods are auto-named from the inputs' existing period labels (with deduplication if collisions).

align_actors

One of "none" (default), "union", or "intersection". Controls how per-period actor sets are reconciled when inputs differ:

  • "none": keep each period's actor set as supplied; resulting longit_list periods may have different dimensions (matches prior behavior).

  • "union": take the union of actor sets across all inputs and pad each period with NA rows/columns for actors not originally present.

  • "intersection": take the intersection of actor sets across all inputs and subset each period to only those actors.

Value

A longit_list netify object.

Details

For combining different layers of the same time slice, use layer_netify().

This is not the same as layer_netify():

  • bind_netifies() joins along TIME.

  • layer_netify() joins along RELATION (layer).

Nodal and dyadic attributes are concatenated per-period; if two inputs supply conflicting values for the same (actor, time), the later input wins (with a one-shot inform).

When downstream models (e.g., tergm CMLE) require uniform actor composition across periods, use align_actors = "union" or "intersection".

Author

Cassy Dorff, Shahryar Minhas

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
data(icews)
n1 <- netify(icews[icews$year == 2010, ],
actor1 = "i", actor2 = "j", symmetric = FALSE,
weight = "verbCoop")
n2 <- netify(icews[icews$year == 2011, ],
actor1 = "i", actor2 = "j", symmetric = FALSE,
weight = "verbCoop")
combined <- bind_netifies(n1, n2, names = c("2010", "2011"))
summary(combined)
} # }