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SEQUENCE ANALYSIS:New Methods for Old IdeasAnnual Review of Sociology, 21: 93-113, 1995. A quiet revolution is underway in social science. We are turning from units to context, from attributes to connections, from causes to events. The change has many antecedents: the exhaustion of our old paradigm, our inherent desire for change, the new powers of computers. It also has many consequences: new areas for empirical work, new methodologies, rediscovery of important old theories. This essay concerns the temporal facet of this move towards context, a turn towards process and events that has taken shape in something called "sequence analysis." It should be understood that sequence analysis (SA) is not a particular technique, like "event history analysis." It is rather a body of questions about social processes and a collection of techniques available to answer them. I begin with a review of the turn towards context, locating SA within a broader classification of approaches to social life. I then consider a variety of empirical literatures that raise problems appropriate for SA. This section leads into a discussion of the basic questions addressable within SA and a location of these questions within a grid of methodologies applicable to sequence data. I then consider some methods for SA. IntroductionLiteratures Methods Literature Cited |
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Introduction
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