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Drop actors with NA covariates from a netify object

Source: R/drop_na_actors.R
drop_na_actors.Rd

Removes actors whose nodal_data carries NA in one or more covariate columns. ERGM terms like nodecov() and nodematch() reject NA-bearing vertex attributes, so this helper is handy upstream of netify_to_statnet. Works for cross-sectional, longitudinal, and bipartite netlets.

Usage

drop_na_actors(netlet, cols = NULL)

Arguments

netlet

A netify object with a nodal_data attribute.

cols

Character vector of column names in nodal_data to check for NA. NULL (the default) checks every non-bookkeeping column (everything except actor, time, and layer).

Value

A netify object equivalent to subset_netify(netlet, actors = clean_actors) after dropping any actor whose nodal rows contain NA in the inspected columns. If no NAs are found the input is returned unchanged.

Details

For longitudinal netlets an actor is dropped from every period if any of its rows in nodal_data carry NA in the inspected columns. For bipartite netlets only actors in the mode that the nodal table covers are filtered; the other mode passes through untouched.

Corner cases:

  • If cols references a name that is not in nodal_data, the call aborts with a clear message listing the missing columns.

  • If no actor carries NA in the inspected columns, the input netlet is returned unchanged (no inform).

  • If every actor carries NA (so the cleaned netlet would have zero actors), the call aborts rather than silently returning an empty netify, which would break downstream to_statnet() / ergm() pipelines.

  • If the netlet has no nodal_data attribute attached, the input is returned unchanged.

Author

Shahryar Minhas

Examples

# \donttest{
data(icews)
net <- netify(
    icews,
    actor1 = "i", actor2 = "j", time = "year",
    symmetric = FALSE, weight = "verbCoop",
    nodal_vars = c("i_polity2", "i_log_gdp", "i_log_pop")
)
clean <- drop_na_actors(net, cols = c("i_polity2", "i_log_gdp"))
#> ℹ Dropped 8 of 152 actors with NA covariates: "Afghanistan", "Bosnia And
#>   Herzegovina", "Djibouti", "Iraq", "Korea, Democratic People's Republic Of",
#>   "Lebanon", "Solomon Islands", and "Somalia".
#> This message is displayed once per session.
# }