Elsevier

Social Science Research

Volume 28, Issue 3, September 1999, Pages 243-264
Social Science Research

Regular Article
Innovations in Life History Calendar Applications

https://doi.org/10.1006/ssre.1998.0641Get rights and content

Abstract

Growing sociological interest in the timing and sequencing of important life events continues to fuel the development of sophisticated analytic methods. The life history calendar (LHC) was designed as a method of collecting detailed individual-level event timing and sequencing data. This paper describes new innovations which make gathering retrospective event history data with an LHC more feasible in a wider range of settings and for a broader set of substantive topics. These innovations allow researchers to accommodate broader age-range populations, populations who do not use standardized time measures, and an expanded set of behaviors. The innovations themselves include adding a more detailed set of timing cues, reorganizing the life history calendar's visual cues, and using new recording strategies. Together these new methods expand the applicability of this well-established data collection tool, increasing the opportunities for using life history calendars to study the timing and sequencing of life events.

References (30)

  • A. Abbott et al.

    Measuring resemblance in sequence data: An optimal matching analysis of musicians' careers

    American Journal of Sociology

    (1990)
  • W.G. Axinn et al.

    The neighborhood history calendar: A data collection method designed for dynamic multilevel modeling

    Sociological Methodology

    (1997)
  • W.G. Axinn et al.

    The microdemographic community-study approach: Improving survey data by integrating the ethnographic method

    Sociological Methods and Research

    (1991)
  • L.W. Barsalou

    The content and organization of autobiographical memories

  • R.F. Belli

    The structure of autobiographical memory and the event history calendar: Potential improvements in the quality of retrospective reports in surveys

    Memory

    (1998)
  • N.M. Bradburn

    Response effects

  • A. Caspi et al.

    The life history calendar: A research and clinical assessment method for collecting retrospective event-history data

    International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research

    (1995)
  • D. Eisenhower et al.

    Recall error: Sources and bias reduction techniques

  • F.J. Fowler

    Reducing interviewer-related error through interviewer training, supervision and other means

  • D. Freedman et al.

    The life history calendar: A technique for collecting retrospective data

    Sociological Methodology

    (1988)
  • T. Fricke

    Himalayan Households: Tamang Demography and Domestic Processes

    (1986)
  • L.A. Lillard et al.

    Til death do us part: Marital disruption and mortality

    American Journal of Sociology

    (1995)
  • E.F. Loftus et al.

    Since the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, has anyone beaten you up? Improving the accuracy of retrospective reports with landmark events

    Memory and Cognition

    (1983)
  • D.S. Massey et al.

    What's driving Mexico–U.S. migration? A theoretical, empirical, and policy analysis

    American Journal of Sociology

    (1997)
  • Cited by (201)

    • The transition to parenthood, opportunity to drink, drinking, and alcohol use disorder

      2022, Drug and Alcohol Dependence
      Citation Excerpt :

      This measure was time-varying and switched from 0 to 1 in the year when the respondent first met diagnostic criteria for any other disorder and stayed 1 until the respondent was censored from the model. We combined measures from the CVFS registry system (Axinn et al., 2012) and LHCs (Axinn et al., 1999) to construct complete lifetime marital and childbearing histories for each respondent. We treated marital experiences as four time-varying measures: never married, ever married, ever widowed, or ever divorced.

    View all citing articles on Scopus

    This research was supported by Grant R01 HD32912 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The authors thank Jennifer Barber, Arland Thornton, Thomas Fricke, Dan Hill, and Ganesh Shivakoti for consultation on the methods presented in this paper. The authors also thank the interviewer supervisor staff of the Chitwan Valley Family Study for all their efforts as well as Cassie Johnstonbaugh for her assistance with the figures.

    f2

    Address correspondence and reprint requests to William G. Axinn, Population Studies Center, The University of Michigan, 1225 South University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2590.

    View full text