design matrix and groups

[vailama]

Dear all,
I’m a new Mark user and I have some questionS about design matrix. As an example, groups are 3 years (1,2,3) and two sexes (10M and 01 F) for – say – 3 occasions on Known fate model. The design matrix (15 rows and 5 columns) without time variation will have k-1 (4) betas columns corresponding to groups and should look like this:

Bint B1 B2 B3 Bsex
1 1 0 0 0
1 1 0 0 0
1 1 0 0 0
1 0 1 0 0
1 0 1 0 0
1 0 1 0 0
1 0 0 1 0
1 0 0 1 0
1 0 0 1 0
1 0 0 0 1
1 0 0 0 1
1 0 0 0 1
1 0 0 0 0
1 0 0 0 0
1 0 0 0 0

The questions are:
1. if I want to run model Ssex i.e. looking for differences depending only on sex, may I delete the columns corresponding to years – just as one does when deleting interactions columns passing from complete to additive model - or set them to ‘0’?
2. what about the interactions year x sex? Can they be performed multiplying B1, B2, B3 for Bsex in the design matrix?
3. While it is quite clear how to obtain the real function parameters output from the betas output, it is not completely clear to me how to get the output of estimate of derived parameters. May be I missed something in the book…
So, what you suggest? Sorry if I’m wasting anybody’s time…but I would be most grateful of any suggestions
e.