Introduction to Event History Analysis
Dates: 3rd April 2012
Duration: 1 day (10am — 4:30pm)
Level: Intermediate
Course Fee: £175 (£125 for those from educational institutions)
CCSR offers 5 free places to research staff and students within the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Manchester and the North West Doctoral Training Centre.
Course Leader: Vanessa Gash
Course Requirements: Participants should be familiar with basic data analysis using STATA. A very brief introduction to the software package will be provided nonetheless. For those not familiar with using Stata there is a good outline available here:
- Rafferty, A. (2008) Introduction to Stata using the UK Labour Force Survey. Manchester: ESDS Government. http://www.esds.ac.uk/government/resources/analysis/
Course Summary
This is an introductory course to event history analysis taught from the perspective of the social sciences. Event history analysis allows the researcher to measure the duration of an event, for instance time spent in unemployment, as well the factors likely to prolong or reduce that event. The course introduces the basic statistical concepts used in the method; it explains how data should be prepared for analysis and also outlines the various types of models that can be applied. The practical component will use nationally representative individual level
Course Objectives
The course will:
- Introduce participants to the basic statistical concepts behind event history analysis.
- Examine the strengths and limitations of the technique
- Introduce basic data management techniques to set up data for event history analysis
- Consider how different data structures and different topics under consideration can be analysed using event history techniques.
- Provide an overview of the different statistical models used to analyse duration data.
Target Audience
The course is designed for those with some previous knowledge and experience of analysing survey data. It would be most appropriate for those who hope to include assessments of change in their analysis of complex panel or retrospective datasets. The practical component of the course is taught using STATA software and some familiarity with the programme is expected.
Preliminary Reading
- Allison, P. D. (1984). Event History Analysis: Regression for Longitudinal Event Data. London: Sage Publications.
- Jacobs, S. (2002) Reliability and Recall of Unemployment Events Using Retrospective Data. Work, Employment and Society 16 (3): 537-548.
- Box-Steffensmeier, J. M. and Jones, B. S. (2004) Event History Modeling: a Guide for Social Scientists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Blossfeld, H-P; K. Golsch, G. Rohwer (2007). Event History Analysis with Stata. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.