SOS9215 ¨C Introduction to event history analysis

Course description

• Course content
• Learning outcome
• Admission
• Prerequisites

• Teaching
• Examination

Course content

This short course offers an introduction to event history analysis, a family of statistical methods that are increasingly popular in the social sciences. Event history analysis is a tool used for analyzing the occurrence and timing of events. Typical examples are life course transitions such as the transition to parenthood and partnership formation processes, labor market processes such as job promotions, mortality, and transitions to and from sickness and disability. The researcher may be interested in examining how the rate of a particular event varies over time or with individual characteristics, social conditions, or other factors. Event history analysis lets the researcher handle censoring and truncation, include time-varying independent variables, account for unobserved heterogeneity (frailty),  and more.

The course takes an intuitive approach to the subject with an emphasis on practical applications. Formal theory will only be covered to a limited extent. The course will rely on Stata as the main computing tool, but users of other statistical software could still benefit from the course. The course is taught through both lectures and lab sessions.

Learning outcome

The course will cover a wide range of topics including the following:

• Event history data structures, collection instruments, coding schemes
• The concepts of censoring and truncation
• Numerical and graphical descriptions of survival data, including life tables and Kaplan-Meier and related estimators
• The Cox proportional hazards model
• Time-varying covariates
• Discrete-time hazard models
• Frailty models (i.e. models incorporating unobserved heterogeneity)
• Advanced topics

Admission

PhD students at the University of Oslo register for the course in StudentWeb.

Others apply through this application form.

Registration deadline is 2nd Desember 2013.

For PhD students at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography this course overlaps with Event History Analysis and the Life Course and Event History Analysis.

Prerequisites

Recommended previous knowledge

The course is for anyone who wants to understand and apply basic event history analysis. It is intended for graduate students in the social and medical sciences. Participants should have a good working knowledge of applied regression analysis and some prior exposure to Stata.

Teaching

Example data will be used in the analyses. Participants may benefit from analyzing their own data during the lab sessions.

Student project discussion

Students are strongly encouraged to submit a very short note about their own projects where event history analysis may be of use. We will then use these notes as a basis for a classroom discussion about whether or not event history analysis is appropriate for the project and, if yes, how to best approach the problem with the techniques covered in the course. Student projects should be submitted to Torkild Hovde Lyngstad, t.h.lyngstad@sosgeo.uio.no, 9th Desember as the latest. They should be maximum half a page long. Do not put much effort into this, as it is only supposed to serve as a ¡°discussion starter.¡±

Preliminary schedule

Please note that details in this schedule may change.

Syllabus: Blossfeld, Golsch, Rohwer, Event History Analysis with Stata, 2009, Psychology press

Instructor:

Torkild Hovde Lyngstad, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo. E-mail: t.h.lyngstad@sosgeo.uio.no

Examination

Participants obtain 6 ECTS credits by completing the course requirements, which are active participation in the course and submission of a paper.

Deadline for submitting the paper is 2nd Februarty 2014. (More details to come.)