spoorenberg: Spoorenberg's Total Modified Whipple Index

In heaping: Correction of Heaping on Individual Level

Spoorenberg's Total Modified Whipple Index

Description

The Total Modified Whipple Index extends Noumbissi's approach by summing the absolute deviations from 1 for all ten digits, providing an overall measure of age heaping across all terminal digits.

Usage

spoorenberg(x, ageMin = 20, ageMax = 64, weight = NULL)

Arguments

x	numeric vector of individual ages.
ageMin	minimum age to include (default 20).
ageMax	maximum age to include (default 64).
weight	optional numeric vector of sampling weights.

Details

Calculate the Total Modified Whipple Index (Wtot) proposed by Spoorenberg.

The index is calculated as:

W_{tot} = \sum_{i=0}^{9} |1 - W_i|

where W_i is Noumbissi's index for digit i.

Interpretation:

• 0: no heaping (perfect data)

• Higher values indicate more heaping

• Maximum theoretical value is 16 (if all ages end in one digit)

Value

A single numeric value representing the Total Modified Whipple Index.

Author(s)

Matthias Templ

References

Spoorenberg, T. and Dutreuilh, C. (2007). Quality of age reporting: extension and application of the modified Whipple's index. Population, 62(4), 729-741.

See Also

noumbissi for single-digit index, whipple for original Whipple's index.

Other heaping indices: bachi(), coale_li(), heaping_indices(), jdanov(), kannisto(), myers(), noumbissi(), whipple()

Examples

# No heaping
set.seed(42)
age_uniform <- sample(20:64, 10000, replace = TRUE)
spoorenberg(age_uniform)  # Should be close to 0

# Strong heaping on 0 and 5
age_heaped <- sample(seq(20, 60, by = 5), 5000, replace = TRUE)
spoorenberg(age_heaped)  # Should be high

heaping documentation built on Feb. 10, 2026, 1:08 a.m.