Social Sequence Analysis

Catalog description

This course addresses the growing area of sociological research that concerns sequences of events, states, activities, and other ordered phenomena that involve various kinds of social actors (e.g., individuals, organizations). This includes a wide variety of topics, including institutional-developmental patterns, life-course trajectories, historical events, and daily activity routines. After a brief introduction to theories concerning the importance of sequential ordering in social processes and the causes and consequences of the sequential ordering of phenomena (e.g., narrative positivism), we will move swiftly to a brief primer on how to search for, measure, and describe patterns in data using sequence analysis (SA). We focus on methods for describing and comparing whole strings of ordered phenomena, including sequence-alignment techniques such as optimal matching (OM) analysis and sequence pattern visualization. This course is primarily structured, though, to give students a friendly academic venue for developing their own SA projects, using the class as a platform for developing arguments, analyses, and interpretations.