Quantitative Methods in the
Social Sciences 2
Summer School on Analysing the life course
Advanced methods for the analysis of complex event history data
| Venue: | University of Bristol, United Kingdom |
| Date: | 27 June -3 July 2010 |
| Organiser: | Professor Fiona Steele, University of Bristol |
| Instructors: | Dr Alexis Gabadinho, Dr Matthias Studer, Professor Stephen Jenkins, Dr Lucinda Platt, Professor Fiona Steele, Dr Arnstein Aassve, Professor Mervi Eerola |
| Web site and materials:: | http://www.cmm.bristol.ac.uk/research/summer-school/index.shtml |
Life course (event history) data often have a highly complex structure with events occurring repeatedly to individuals over time, transitions between multiple ‘states’, and interdependencies between different event processes. To take an example, consider a study of the effect of having children on women’s employment transitions. Over time women may have several children, they may repeatedly move between employment and non-employment states, and their childbearing and employment decisions may have shared unmeasured determinants.
Last year, the QMSS2 Summer School on the ‘Analysing the Life Course’ theme (held in Paris) provided an introduction to event history analysis. This year’s Summer School will cover more advanced topics with a focus on methods for analysing recurrent events, transitions between states and interdependent events. We will consider both descriptive techniques for exploring complex histories (sequence analysis) as well as statistical modelling approaches (e.g. simultaneous equation models).
Programme
| Date | Course/Topic | Instructors |
| 27 June (evening) | Welcome and dinner | |
| 28-29 June | Sequence analysis for social scientists | Dr Alexis Gabadinho & Matthias Studer University of Geneva |
| 30 June | Survival (event history) analysis | Prof Stephen Jenkins and Dr Lucinda Platt University of Essex, UK |
| 1-2 July | Models for recurrent events, multiple states and interdependent events | Prof Fiona Steele University of Bristol, UK |
| 3 July (morning) | Applications of sequence analysis and event history analysis | Dr Arnstein Aassve University of Bocconi, Italy |
| Prof Mervi Eerola University of Jyväskylä, Finland |
Prerequisites and preliminary reading
As this is an advanced course, knowledge of standard event history methods for analysing the time to a single event will be assumed.
Before attending the summer school, participants should ensure that they are familiar with the methods described in:
Blossfeld, Hans-Peter, Golsch, Katrin and Rohwer, Götz (2007). Event History Analysis with Stata, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. (Chapters 1-7 and 9)
Softwear
The courses will use mainly TraMineR (written in the R statistical environment) and Stata. No prior experience with either will be assumed. However, some familiarity with Stata will be an advantage. Details of online resources can be found at http://www.stata.com/links/resources1.html. See also Modules 3 and 5 of the Centre for Multilevel Modelling online learning materials at http://www.cmm.bris.ac.uk/learning-training/course.shtml, and Lesson 1 of Stephen Jenkins’ survival analysis tutorials at http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/survival-analysis.