A workflow guide for longitudinal panel analysis

Longitudinal panel data rarely arrives ready for analysis. Respondents drop out early, skip isolated waves, or enter the study late. Before any model can be fitted, a researcher must decide which waves to retain and which respondents qualify — a deceptively consequential decision that is too often made informally. weasel provides two structured, reproducible pipelines for this task.

What the package does

Maps wave participation patterns across respondents
Compares selection scenarios with explicit structural constraints
Produces analysis-ready long-format data frames
Generates prose justifications suitable for methods sections

Two core pipelines

Scope Exploratory. Map the missingness landscape before committing to any selection rule.

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Plan Comparative. Enforce explicit constraints, score trade-offs, and extract a reproducible sample.

↓ Use the decision tree below to identify the workflow that matches your situation. Each step reveals only the next relevant choice.