Database for historical research (1 Viewer)

I have a question regarding a database that I am trying to build for my PhD-research in the field of history. It is the aim of my research to follow people throughout a number of years. Throughout each of those years important variables (e.g. death of a parent, apprenticeship, address, ..) may and will change. But how can I include these chronological changes in my database? Do I 1) add multiple records per person for each year and change the variables per year or 2) use a specific element of Access that allows me to do this?

Help is much appreciated as my pile of books on Access can’t seem to provide an answer!

I would use a related table with a separate record for each event. This table would have PersonID, EventTypeID, EventDate. Maybe another field for a comment.

This way, new event types can be added without modifying the tables, forms and reports.

To add to what Greg said, please learn about these topics: database normalization; parent/child table relationships; queries as a means of ordering records.

Once you understand those terms, you will recognize that each event tied to a person would be separate, but your report could based on a query that joins events to the persons for whom those events were of interest. The query could then group by person then by date and you would automatically have the events for a given person in chronological order. You could also tell the report to sort by date in the "detail" sections. Either way might be adequate for your needs.

Rather than what I first posted, Events to Persons should be a Many-to-many relationship via a junction table.

This way a single event can be connected to multiple people.

Thank you both for your reply. I feel like maybe I should be a little more detailed on the complicated nature of the information that I am gathering. Among my variables are the age of the apprentice; the profession of their father; whether their father was deceased; in which profession they were apprenticed; who their master artisan was; … Because I can follow these apprentices throughout multiple years, each of these variables can change each year (their father might die, they might change masters, they might change professions, ..). So it is quite possible that every record can have different variabels.

Galaxiom:
If I understand correctly:
The variables which I integrate in my database are (among others): the starting age of the apprentice; the event of the apprentice running away from his master artisan; the outcome of running away: returning to the same master, changing masters, changing professions, not-returning, … So you suggest that I design a related table for each of these events: a table for the event of running away, a table for the changing of master artisans, a table for returning to the same master and so on. If so, would it be problematic that I might need twentysomething related tables?

The Doc Man
Thank you for these suggestions, I will certainly learn about them!
This seems like a good suggestion, I am going to look into this.