The phrase "an earlier classification" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when referring to a classification that was made prior to the current one being discussed or analyzed.
Example: "The study builds upon an earlier classification of species that was proposed in the 1990s."
Alternatives: "a previous classification" or "a prior classification".
According to an earlier classification, cells exhibiting contact angles of θw < 20°, 20° ≤ θw ≤ 50° and θw > 50° were considered hydrophilic, intermediately hydrophilic and hydrophobic, respectively (Van Loosdrecht et al. 1987).
Start and end times of calls were manually set, and call category assignment was done as per an earlier classification (Wright et al., 2010).
The birth rank was dichotomized into 'Primogenitor or only child' or 'Not primogenitor' based on an earlier classification by Ola et al. [ 45].
An earlier classification of PrPSc types seen in classical CJD described only two banding patterns [ 88] with PrPSc types 1 and 2 that we describe corresponding with the type 1 pattern of Gambetti and colleagues and our type 3 fragment size corresponding to their type 2 pattern [ 87, 90].
An earlier classification of PrPSc types seen in classical CJD described only two banding patterns (Parchi et al., 1996, 1999) with PrPSc types 1 and 2 that we describe corresponding with the type 1 pattern of Gambetti and Parchi and colleagues, and our type 3 fragment size corresponding to their type 2 pattern.
This study shows that an early classification of patients into risk strata based on biological and certain psychosocial functions predicts non-recovery.
Despite the lack of respective, comprehensive data sets in veterinary medicine, we feel that it is important to avoid an early classification of drug resistant epilepsy having a negative impact on the clinician's efforts to continue with therapeutic trials in individual patients.
An early classification system based on shape and tension was advanced by Francis Taylor Piggott in 1909.
In this context, a review and an evaluation of earlier classification systems for groundwater, riparian areas and wetlands as well as for streams and rivers are given.
Some linguists consider it the most influential study on African languages, while others find Greenberg's work to be only a modification of the earlier classification scheme of Diedrich Westermann.
Employment tribunals can also be involved in determining a worker's employment status — sometimes overturning an earlier HMRC classification.
