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Abstract

In its standard formulation, sequence analysis aims at finding typical patterns in a set of life courses represented as sequences. Recently, some proposals have been introduced to jointly analyze sequences defined on different domains (e.g., work career, partnership, and parental histories). We introduce measures to evaluate whether a set of domains are interrelated and their joint analysis justified. Also, we discuss about the quality of the results obtained using joint sequence analysis. In particular, we focus on cluster analysis and propose criteria to assess whether clusters obtained using a joint approach satisfactorily describe each domain.

Keywords

sequence analysis multiple sequence analysis dissimilarity optimal matching cluster analysis Cronbach’s α principal components analysis

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