I have two scenarios for which I am curious about the results: A person has a work and personal phone. Does this person get double counted? A person turns on airplane mode during the night does (s)he still get counted?

Questions & Help
1

About the designating a home census block group (CBG) to any device: So in order to be assigned to a CBG you need to spend the majority of your nights at that CBG. I have two scenarios for which I am curious about the results:

  1. A person has a work and personal phone. Does this person get double counted?
  2. A person turns on airplane mode during the night does (s)he still get counted?
2

Hi @Jonas_Peeters_New_York_University, ultimately it is uncertain without having a specific user to check and see. However, If a person has a work phone and a personal phone, assuming both phones are being monitored by safegraph / safegraph partners, yes that person would likely be counted twice. If airplane mode is turned on for an extended period of time, lets say the entire duration that person stays at home, also barring any Wifi connection, they will not be counted. If the device has been disconnected from the world, it cannot/will not be counted. Wifi can **sometimes be counted, but can also create strange movement patterns that are typically discarded pre-release.

I hope this helps

3

@Jack_Lindsay_Kraken1 Thank you that does help me make a better assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the dataset.

4

Great! glad it helped. Let me know if you have any other questions!

5

I will clarify that only the strange patterns are removed from the wifi data, not all wifi data* – typically if the location ping bounces around due to the ISP