You must specify a Beginning valuation date and an Ending valuation date at least one year apart, for example, 1/1/1992 and 1/1/1999. The study must span an integral number of years; partial years are not permitted.

Next, for each year in the study period, you must choose a Database from the databases in your client. You cannot omit this specification for intermediate years; ProVal will not replace a blank entry by selecting a database from an adjacent date. If you have no census data for some intermediate years, consider performing separate Experience Studies of the time periods before and after the years without census data.

You may choose a Census Specifications set for each Database file. Selecting Census Specifications allows you to use Data Defaults and use, by reference to the Census Specifications, database fields that are required under the Active Data or Inactive Data topics of your Experience Study. These fields are generally the same as in the Census Specifications for Valuations. Note, however, that the sex field must be of the coded field type: a numeric field containing the percent male cannot be used.

Check the Apply data defaults box to apply Data Defaults to each database file. If you check the box but do not want to use Data Defaults for every database file specified, then you need to select a set of Census Specifications that does not contain Data Defaults for those database files for which you do not want to use Data Defaults. Note: the option to default numeric fields to zero (excluding salaries) will be ignored.

If the List RecIDs where data defaults were applied box is checked, ProVal will display a list of the record IDs for all database records that had at least one data default applied.

Click the Selection Exprs… button to enter the Selection Expressions dialog box, where you may indicate that only records meeting certain criteria should be selected from a particular database. This is particularly useful for excluding records with invalid data or running a sample life calculation. Select a database from the list of those already associated with dates in the study and provide the Selection expression. (An asterisk next to the database name indicates that you have entered a selection expression.) You may make different selections for each database. When you have entered all your selection expressions, click OK to return to the Databases dialog box.

Enter Key field(s) to match records from one year to the next. You may specify one or more key fields. Unique keys are required in each database, but only for the records meeting the selection expression(s), if any. For key fields of the character type, indicate whether to Match case in keys, referring to upper and lower case letters (for example, if matching by plant location, is “A” the same code as “a”?).

Alt Key is an optional parameter that can be used to specify a secondary key field (or fields). When a matching record cannot be found based on the primary key field, a second check is performed using the alternate key. This can be helpful in situations where Social Security numbers or employee ID numbers are corrected from one year to the next. As an example, consider a current year database with primary key field EEID and alternate key field OLDEEID. When matching EEID in the current year database against the prior year database, a second step will be taken for any for any unmatched records. Those unmatched records in the current year will also have the alternate key field OLDEEID checked for possible matches against EEID in the prior year.