The relationship between processes and time-varying covariates is of central theoretical interest in addressing many social science research questions. On the one hand, event history analysis (EHA) has been the chosen method to study these kinds of relationships when the outcomes can be meaningfully specified as simple instantaneous events or transitions. On the other hand, sequence analysis (SA) has made increasing inroads into the social sciences to analyze trajectories as holistic “process outcomes.” We propose an original combination of these two approaches called the sequence analysis multistate model (SAMM) procedure. The SAMM procedure allows the study of the relationship between time-varying covariates and trajectories of categorical states specified as process outcomes that unfold over time. The SAMM is a stepwise procedure: (1) SA-related methods are used to identify ideal-typical patterns of changes within trajectories obtained by considering the sequence of states over a predefined time span; (2) multistate event history models are estimated to study the probability of transitioning from a specific state to such ideal-typical patterns. The added value of the SAMM procedure is illustrated through an example from life-course sociology on how (1) time-varying family status is associated with women’s employment trajectories in East and West Germany and (2) how German reunification affected these trajectories in the two subsocieties.
AbbottAndrew. 1995. “Sequence Analysis: New Methods for Old Ideas.” Annual Review of Sociology21:93–113.
2.
AbbottAndrew. 2005. “The Historicality of Individuals.” Social Science History29:1–13.
3.
AbbottAndrew. 2009. “A propos du concept de Turning Point.” Pp. 187–211 in Bifurcations: les sciences sociales face aux ruptures et à l’événement, edited by BessinM.BidartC.GrossettiM.Paris: La Découverte.
4.
AbbottAndrewForrestJohn. 1986. “Optimal Matching Methods for Historical Sequences.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History16:471–94.
5.
AisenbreySilkeEvertssonMarieGrunowDaniela. 2009. “Is There a Career Penalty for Mothers’ Time Out? A Comparison of Germany, Sweden, and the United States.” Social Forces88:573–606.
6.
AisenbreyS.FasangA. E.2010. “New Life for Old Ideas: The ‘Second Wave’ of Sequence Analysis Bringing the ‘Course’ Back into the Life Course.” Sociological Methods and Research38:420–62.
7.
AllisonPaul D.1982. “Discrete-time Methods for the Analysis of Event Histories.” Pp. 61–98 in Sociological Methodology. Vol. 12, edited by LienhardtS.San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
8.
AllisonPaul D.1984. Event History Analysis: Regression for Longitudinal Event Data. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
9.
AndersenPer KraghKeidingNiels. 2002. “Multi-state Models for Event History Analysis.” Statistical Methods in Medical Research11:91–115.
10.
BiemannT.FasangA. E.GrunowD.2011. “Do Economic Globalization and Industry Growth Destabilize Careers? An Analysis of Career Complexity and Career Patterns over Time.” Organization Studies32:1639–63.
11.
BijwaardGovert E.2014. “Multistate Event History Analysis with Frailty.” Demographic Research30:1591–620.
12.
BillariFrancesco C.2005. “Life Course Analysis: Two (Complementary) Cultures? Some Reflections with Examples from the Analysis of the Transition to Adulthood.” Advances in Life Course Research10:261–81.
13.
BlossfeldHans-PeterHamerleAlfred. 1990. “Unobserved Heterogeneity in Hazard Rate Models: A Test and an Illustration from a Study of Career Mobility.” Pp. 241–52 in Event History Analysis in Life Course Research, edited by MayerK. U.TumaN. B.Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
14.
BlossfeldHans-PeterRohwerGötz. 2002. Techniques of Event History Modeling: New Approaches to Causal Analysis. 2nd ed.Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
15.
BlossfeldHans-PeterRossbachHans-Günthervon MauriceJutta, eds. 2011. Education as a Lifelong Process—The German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer.
16.
BoninHolgerEuwalsRob. 2002. “Participation Behavior of East German Women after German Unification.” SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 297087, Social Science Research Network, Rochester, NY.
17.
BrücknerH.2004. Gender Inequality in the Life Course: Social Change and Stability in West Germany 1975–1995. Somerset, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
18.
BrücknerHannahMayerKarl Ulrich. 2005. “De-standardization of the Life Course: What It Might Mean? And If It Means Anything, Whether It Actually Took Place?” Advances in Life Course Research9:27–53.
19.
Brzinsky-FayChristian. 2007. “Lost in Transition? Labour Market Entry Sequences of School Leavers in Europe.” European Sociological Review23:409–22.
20.
Brzinsky-FayChristian. 2010. “The Concept of Transitional Labour Markets: A Theoretical and Methodological Inventory.” WZB Discussion Paper No. SP I 2010-507, WZB Social Science Center, Berlin.
21.
Brzinsky-FayChristian. 2014. “The Measurement of School-to-work Transitions as Processes.” European Societies16:213–32.
22.
CarrollGlenn R.PreisendoerferPeterSwaminathanAnandWiedenmayerGabriele. 1993. “Brewery and Brauerei: The Organizational Ecology of Brewing.” Organization Studies14:155–88.
23.
CourgeauDanielLelièvreÉva. 1993. Event History Analysis in Demography. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.
24.
de WreedeLiesbeth C.FioccoMartaPutterHein. 2011. “mstate: An R Package for the Analysis of Competing Risks and Multi-state Models.” Journal of Statistical Software38:1–30.
25.
DiewaldMartin. 2006. “The Quest for a Double Transformation: Trends of Flexibilization in the Labor Market of East and West Germany.” Pp. 214–36 in After the Fall of the Wall. Life Courses in the Transformation of East Germany, edited by DiewaldM.GoedickeA.MayerK. U.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
26.
DiewaldMartinMachBodgan W.2006. “Comparing Paths of Transition: Employment Opportunities and Earnings in East Germany and Poland during the First Ten Years of the Transformation Process.” Pp. 237–68 in After the Fall of the Wall. Life Courses in the Transformation of East Germany, edited by DiewaldM.GoedickeA.MayerK. U.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
27.
DiewaldMartinSolgaHeikeGoedickeAnne. 2006. “Old Assets, New Liabilities? How Did Individual Characteristics Contribute to Labor Market Success or Failure after 1998?” Pp. 65–88 in After the Fall of the Wall. Life Courses in the Transformation of East Germany, edited by DiewaldM.GoedickeA.MayerK. U.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
28.
ElderGlen H.1974. Children of the Great Depression: Social Change in Life Experience. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
29.
ElderGlen H.Kirkpatrick JohnsonMonicaCrosnoeRobert. 2003. “The Emergence and Development of Life Course Theory.” Pp. 3–19 in Handbook of the Life Course, edited by MortimerJ. T.ShanahanM. J.New York: Springer.
30.
ElzingaC. H.2005. “Combinatorial Representations of Token Sequences.” Journal of Classification22:87–118.
31.
ElzingaCeesStuderMatthias. Forthcoming. “Normalization of Distance and Similarity in Sequence Analysis.” Sociological Methods and Research.
32.
FasangAnette Eva. 2014. “New Perspectives on Family Formation: What Can We Learn from Sequence Analysis?” Pp. 107–28 in Advances in Sequence Analysis: Theory, Method, Applications, edited by BlanchardP.BühlmannF.GauthierJ.-A.New York: Springer International Publishing.
33.
FasangAnette EvaLiaoTim Futing. 2014. “Visualizing Sequences in the Social Sciences.” Sociological Methods & Research43:643–76.
34.
FrankDavid JohnHironakaAnnSchoferEvan. 2000. “The Nation-state and the Natural Environment over the Twentieth Century.” American Sociological Review65:96–116.
35.
FranzWolfgangSteinerViktor. 2000. “Wages in the East German Transition Process: Facts and Explanations.” German Economic Review1:241–69.
36.
GallerHeinz P.PoetterUlrich. 1990. “Unobserved Heterogeneity in Models of Unemployment.” Pp. 226–40 in Event History Analysis in Life Course Research, edited by MayerK. U.TumaN. B.Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
37.
GoldsteinJoshua R.KreyenfeldMichaela. 2011. “Has East Germany Overtaken West Germany? Recent Trends in Order-specific Fertility.” Population and Development Review37:453–72.
38.
GundertStefanieMayerKarl Ulrich. 2012. “Gender Segregation in Training and Social Mobility of Women in West Germany.” European Sociological Review28:59–81.
39.
HauschildChristine. 2002. “Die empirische Typisierung von Versichertenbiografien.” Deutsche Rentenversicherung57:539–89.
40.
Hertz-PicciottoIrvaRockhillBeverly. 1997. “Validity and Efficiency of Approximation Methods for Tied Survival Times in Cox Regression.” Biometrics53:1151–56.
41.
HoemJ. M.KreyenfeldM.2006. “Anticipatory Analysis and Its Alternatives in Life-course Research. Part 1: The Role of Education in the Study of First Childbearing.” Demographic Research15:461–84.
42.
HosmerDavid W.LemeshowStanley. 1999. Applied Survival Analysis: Regression Modeling of Time to Event Data. New York: Wiley.
43.
HuininkJ.MayerK. U.DiewaldM.SolgaH.SørensenA.TrappeH.1995. Kollektiv und Eigensinn. Lebensverläufe in der DDR und danach. Berlin, Germany: Akademie Verlag.
44.
KaufmanL.RousseeuwP. J.1990. Finding Groups in Data: An Introduction to Cluster Analysis. New York: Wiley.
45.
KlammerUteTillmannKatja. 2001. “Erwerbsbiografien als Mosaik-Längsschnittergebnisse zur Zusammensetzung von Erwerbsbiografien und ihren Veränderungen, zum Einkommenserwerb im Lebensverlauf und den Folgen für die Absicherung im Alter.” Pp. 141–223 in Flexicurity: Soziale Sicherung und Flexibilisierung der Arbeits-und Lebensverhältnisse, Düsseldorf, Germany: WSI und Hans Böckler Stiftung.
46.
KreyenfeldMichaela. 2003. “Crisis or Adaptation—Reconsidered: A Comparison of East and West German Fertility Patterns in the First Six Years after the ‘Wende.’” European Journal of Population/Revue Européenne de Démographie19:303–29.
47.
KreyenfeldMichaela. 2004. “Fertility Decisions in the FRG and GDR: An Analysis with Data from the German Fertility and Family Survey.” Demographic Research3:276–318.
48.
LiefbroerAart C.ToulemonLaurent. 2010. “Demographic Perspectives on the Transition to Adulthood: An Introduction.” Advances in Life Course Research15:53–58.
49.
LunnMaryMcNeilDon. 1995. “Applying Cox Regression to Competing Risks.” Biometrics51:524–32.
50.
MacIndoeHeatherAbbottAndrew. 2004. “Sequence Analysis and Optimal Matching Techniques for Social Science Data.” Pp. 387–406 in Handbook of Data Analysis, edited by HardyM.BrymanA.London: SAGE Publications.
51.
ManzoniAnnaHärkönenJuhoMayerKarl Ulrich. 2014. “Moving on? A Growth-curve Analysis of Occupational Attainment and Career Progression Patterns in West Germany.” Social Forces92:1285–312.
52.
MayerKarl Ulrich. 2006. “After the Fall of the Wall: Living Through the Post-socialist Transformation in East Germany.” Pp. 1–28 in After the Fall of the Wall: Life Courses in the Transformation of East Germany, edited by DiewaldM.GoedickeA.MayerK. U.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
53.
MayerKarl Ulrich. 2009. “New Directions in Life Course Research.” Annual Review of Sociology35:413–33.
54.
MayerKarl UlrichDiewaldMartinSolgaHeike. 1999. “Transitions to Postcommunism in East Germany: Worklife Mobility of Women and Men Between 1989 and 1993.” Acta Sociologica42:35–53.
55.
MayerKarl UlrichGrunowDanielaNitscheNatalie. 2010. “Mythos Flexibilisierung?” KZfSS Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie62:369–402.
56.
MayerKarl UlrichTumaNancy Brandon. 1990. “Life Course Research and Event History Analysis: An Overview.” Pp. 3–22 in Event History Analysis in Life Course Research, edited by MayerK. U.TumaN. B.Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
57.
MinkoffDebra C.1995. Organizing for Equality: The Evolution of Women’s and Racial-ethnic Organizations in America, 1955–1985. Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
58.
MüllerNicolas S.GabadinhoAlexisRitschardGilbertStuderMatthias. 2008. “Extracting Knowledge from Life Courses: Clustering and Visualization.” In Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery, 10th International Conference, DAWAK 2008, Turin, Italy, September 2-5, edited by SongI.-Y.EderJ.NguyenT. M. Vol. LNCS 5182, pp. 176–85. Berlin: Springer.
59.
OlzakSusan. 1989. “Analysis of Events in the Study of Collective Action.” Annual Review of Sociology15:119–41.
60.
PiccarretaRaffaellaLiorOrna. 2010. “Exploring Sequences: A Graphical Tool Based on Multi-dimensional Scaling.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society)173:165–84.
61.
PutterHeinFioccoM.GeskusR. B.2007. “Tutorial in Biostatistics: Competing Risks and Multi-state Models.” Statistics in Medicine26:2389–430.
62.
RobetteNicolasBryXavier. 2012. “Harpoon or Bait? A Comparison of Various Metrics in Fishing for Sequence Patterns.” Bulletin of Sociological Methodology/Bulletin de Méthodologie Sociologique116:5–24.
63.
RosenfeldRachel A.TrappeHeikeGornickJanet C.2004. “Gender and Work in Germany: Before and after reunification.” Annual Review of Sociology30:103–24.
64.
ShanahanMichael J.2000. “Pathways to Adulthood in Changing Societies: Variability and Mechanisms in Life Course Perspective.” Annual Review of Sociology26:667–92.
65.
SimonsonJ. L.GordoRomeoKelleN.2011. “The Double German Transformation: Changing Male Employment Patterns in East and West Germany.” Working Paper 391, German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
66.
SolgaHeikeDiewaldMartin. 2001. “The East German Labour Market after German Unification: A Study of Structural Change and Occupational Matching.” Work, Employment, and Society15:95–126.
67.
SteeleFionaGoldsteinHarveyBrowneWilliam. 2004. “A General Multilevel Multistate Competing Risks Model for Event History Data, with an Application to a Study of Contraceptive Use Dynamics.” Statistical Modelling4:145–59.
68.
StruffolinoEmanuelaStuderMatthiasFasangAnette Eva. 2016. “Gender, Education, and Family Life Courses in East and West Germany: Insights from New Sequence Analysis Techniques.” Advances in Life Course Research29:66–79.
69.
StuderMatthias. 2013. “WeightedCluster Library Manual: A Practical Guide to Creating Typologies of Trajectories in the Social Sciences with R.” LIVES Working Papers 24, NCCR LIVES, Switzerland.
70.
StuderMatthiasMüllerNicolas S.RitschardGilbertGabadinhoAlexis. 2010. “Classer, discriminer et visualiser des séquences d’événements.” Revue des nouvelles technologies de l’information RNTI E-19:37–48.
71.
StuderMatthiasRitschardGilbert. 2016. “What Matters in Differences between Life Trajectories: A Comparative Review of Sequence Dissimilarity Measures.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society)79:481–511.
72.
StuderMatthiasRitschardGilbertGabadinhoAlexisMüllerNicolas S.2011. “Discrepancy Analysis of State Sequences.” Sociological Methods and Research40:471–510.
73.
TherneauTerry M.GrambschPatricia M.2000. Modeling Survival Data: Extending the Cox Model. New York: Springer.
74.
TreasJudithWidmerEric D.2000. “Married Women’s Employment over the Life Course: Attitudes in Cross-national Perspective.” Social Forces78:1409–36.
75.
TrischlerF.KistlerE.2010. “Gute Erwerbsbiographien–Arbeitspapier 1: Erwerbsverläufe im Wandel.” Bericht an die Hans-Böckler-Stiftung (https://www.boeckler.de/pdf_fof/95619.pdf).
76.
WuLawrence L.2003. “Event History Models for Life Course Analysis.” Pp. 477–502 in Handbook of the Life Course, edited by MortimerJ.ShanahanM.New York: Springer.
77.
YamaguchiKazuo. 1991. Event History Analysis. Applied Social Research Methods Series 28. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
