Blackwell Reference Online

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Event history analysis is a term used in sociology for numerous statistical methods that use information about whether and when an individual experiences an event. Almost any social phenomenon can be thought of as an event that happens to an individual, whether that individual is (for example) a woman having a third child, a city experiencing a race riot, or a state legislature passing women's suffrage. It is not surprising, then, that as computer software has made event history techniques easier to use since the 1980s, researchers have found many imaginative applications for these techniques. Sociologists use the term event history analysis to describe models for duration data, but similar models are used in other disciplines with different names and slightly different terminologies. For example, models for duration data are called survival analysis by health scientists, duration analysis by economists, and failure-time analysis by engineers. Many of the original and ongoing developments in duration modeling come from the health sciences, and some of the terms used in event history analysis (such as risk and hazard ) reflect this heritage. Event history data generally require three pieces of information. These are whether an individual experienced an event, when an individual who experienced an event experienced that event, and when the last valid observation came ... log in or subscribe to read full text