Sequence analysis in social sciences

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diversity of pathways to legitimate reproduction. At an intra-individual level, sequence analysis integrates the basic life course principle that individuals interpret and make decision about their life according to their past experiences and their perception of contingencies. The interest for this perspective was also promoted by the changes in individuals' life courses for cohorts born between the beginning and the end of the 20th century. These changes have been described as de-standardization, de-synchronization, de-institutionalization. Among the drivers of these dynamics, the transition to adulthood is key: for more recent birth cohorts this crucial phase along individual life courses implied a larger number of events and lengths of the state spells experienced. For example, many postponed leaving parental home and the transition to parenthood, in some context cohabitation replaced marriage as long-lasting living arrangement, and the birth of the first child occurs more frequently while parents cohabit instead of within a wedlock. Such complexity required to be measured to be able to compare quantitative indicators across birth cohorts (see for an extension of this questioning to populations from low- and medium income countries). The demography's old ambition to develop a 'family demography' has found in the sequence analysis a powerful tool to address research questions at the cross-road with other disciplines: for example, multichannel techniques represent precious opportunities to deal with the issue of compatibility between working and family lives. Similarly, more recent combinations of sequence analysis and event history analysis have been developed (see for a review) and can be applied, for instance, for understanding of the link between demographic transitions and health.

967:, research has shown that firm performance depends not just on a firm's current or recent social network connectedness, but also the durability or stability of their connections to other firms. Firms that have more "durably cohesive" ownership network structures attract more foreign investment than less stable or poorly connected structures. Research has also used data on everyday work activity sequences to identify classes of work schedules, finding that the timing of work during the day significantly affects workers' abilities to maintain connections with the broader community, such as through community events. More recently, social sequence analysis has been proposed as a meaningful approach to study trajectories in the domain of creative enterprise, allowing the comparison among the idiosyncrasies of unique creative careers. While other methods for constructing and analyzing whole sequence structure have been developed during the past three decades, including event structure analysis, OM and other sequence comparison methods form the backbone of research on whole sequence structures. 283:

importance is given to, first, the role of contexts, which confer meaning to trends and events, while shared contexts offer shared meanings; second, to changes over time in power relationships, and, subsequently, asymmetries, hierarchies, contention, or conflict; and, finally, to historical events that are able to shape trajectories, such as elections, accidents, inaugural speeches, treaties, revolutions, or ceasefires. Empirically, political sequences' unit of analysis can be individuals, organizations, movements, or institutional processes. Depending on the unit of analysis, the sample sizes may be limited few cases (e.g., regions in a country when considering the turnover of local political parties over time) or include a few hundreds (e.g., individuals' voting patterns). Three broad kinds of political sequences may be distinguished. The first and most common is

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timeframe. Chronograms (also known as status proportion plot or state distribution plot) completely overlook the diversity of the sequences, while index plots are often too scattered to be readable. Relative frequency plots and plots of representative sequences attempt to increase the readability of index plots without falling in the oversimplification of a chronogram. In addition, there are many plots that focus on specific characteristics of the sequences. Below is a list of plots that have been proposed in the literature for rendering large sets of sequences. For each plot, we give examples of software (details in section

27: 135:) have begun to turn to sequence methods and concepts to understand how social contacts and activities are enacted in real time, and to model and depict how whole networks evolve. Social network epidemiologists have begun to examine social contact sequencing to better understand the spread of disease. Psychologists have used those methods to study how the order of information affects learning, and to identify structure in interactions between individuals (see 219:

This idea serves as an implicit motivation behind social sequence analysts' use of optimal matching, clustering, and related methods to identify common "classes" of sequences at all levels of social organization, a form of pattern search. This focus on regularized patterns of social action has become an increasingly influential framework for understanding microsocial interaction and contact sequences, or "microsequences." This is closely related to

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sequences from the pairwise dissimilarities. However, SA is much more (see e.g.) and encompasses also among others the description and visual rendering of sets of sequences, ANOVA-like analysis and regression trees for sequences, the identification of representative sequences, the study of the relationship between linked sequences (e.g. dyadic, linked-lives, or various life dimensions such as occupation, family, health), and sequence-network.

416: 42:. Analyzed sequences are encoded representations of, for example, individual life trajectories such as family formation, school to work transitions, working careers, but they may also describe daily or weekly time use or represent the evolution of observed or self-reported health, of political behaviors, or the development stages of organizations. Such sequences are chronologically ordered unlike words or DNA sequences for example. 477: 127:

life-course sequences. Many scholars have used sequence techniques to model how work and family activities are linked in household divisions of labor and the problem of schedule synchronization within families. The study of interaction patterns is increasingly centered on sequential concepts, such as turn-taking, the predominance of reciprocal utterances, and the strategic solicitation of preferred types of responses (see

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who followed an "orderly" career path (characterized by consistent employment and gradual ladder-climbing within a single organization) retired earlier than others, including people who had intermittent careers, those who entered the labor force late, as well as those who enjoyed regular employment but who made numerous lateral moves across organizations throughout their careers. In the field of

910:. This wave is largely characterized by the effort of bringing together the stochastic and the algorithmic modeling culture by jointly applying SA with more established methods such as analysis of variance, event history, network analysis, or causal analysis and statistical modeling in general. Some examples are given below; see also "Other methods of analysis". 239:, who led a 1939 study that found that daily life is so routinized that a given person is able to predict with about 75% accuracy how much time they will spend doing certain things the following day. Talcott Parsons's argument that all social actors are mutually oriented to their larger social systems (for example, their family and larger community) through 269:

occurrence and timing of demographic events studied separately from each other with a hypothetico-deductive approach, from the early 2000s the need to consider the structure of the life courses and to make justice to its complexity led to a growing use of sequence analysis with the aim of pursuing a holistic approach. At an inter-individual level,

181:, and the development of summary indicators of individual sequences. Raab and Struffolino have conceived more recent advances as the third wave of sequence analysis. This wave is largely characterized by the effort of bringing together the stochastic and the algorithmic modeling culture by jointly applying SA with more established methods such as 1184:(SAA) was founded at the International Symposium on Sequence Analysis and Related Methods, in October 2018 at Monte Verità, TI, Switzerland. The SAA is an international organization whose goal is to organize events such as symposia and training courses and related events, and to facilitate scholars' access to sequence analysis resources. 691:(OM), i.e. the minimal cost of transforming one sequence into the other by means of indel (insert or delete) and substitution operations with possibly costs of these elementary operations depending on the states involved. SA is so intimately linked with OM that it is sometimes named optimal matching analysis (OMA). 372:, where states last while events occur at one time point and do not last but contribute possibly together with other events to state changes. For instance, the joint occurrence of the two events leaving home and starting a union provoke a state change from 'living at home with parents' to 'living with a partner'. 375:

When a state sequence is represented as the list of states observed at the successive time points, the position of each element in the sequence conveys this time information and the distance between positions reflects duration. An alternative more compact representation of a sequence, is the list of

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These techniques have proved valuable in a variety of contexts. In life-course research, for example, research has shown that retirement plans are affected not just by the last year or two of one's life, but instead how one's work and family careers unfolded over a period of several decades. People

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The analysis of temporal processes in the domain of political sciences regards how institutions, that is, systems and organizations (regimes, governments, parties, courts, etc.) that crystallize political interactions, formalize legal constraints and impose a degree of stability or inertia. Special

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processes This concern inspired the initial framing of social sequence analysis as an antidote to general linear models. It has also motivated recent attempts to model sequences of activities or events in terms as elements that link social actors in non-linear network structures This work, in turn,

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The analysis of sequence patterns has foundations in sociological theories that emerged in the middle of the 20th century. Structural theorists argued that society is a system that is characterized by regular patterns. Even seemingly trivial social phenomena are ordered in highly predictable ways.

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Pairwise dissimilarities between sequences give access to a series of techniques to discover holistic structuring characteristics of the sequence data. In particular, dissimilarities between sequences can serve as input to cluster algorithms and multidimensional scaling, but also allow to identify

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In demography and historical demography, from the 1980s the rapid appropriation of the life course perspective and methods was part of a substantive paradigmatic change that implied a stronger embedment of demographic processes into social sciences dynamics. After a first phase with a focus on the

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Conventional SA consists essentially in building a typology of the observed trajectories. Abbott and Tsay (2000) describe this typical SA as a three-step program: 1. Coding individual narratives as sequences of states; 2. Measuring pairwise dissimilarities between sequences; and 3. Clustering the

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and clustering appeared as the appropriate tools for revealing the heterogeneity in human development. For example, the meta-narrations contrasting individualized Western societies with collectivist societies in the South (especially in Asia) were challenged by comparative studies revealing the

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State sequences can nicely be rendered graphically and such plots prove useful for interpretation purposes. As shown above, the two basic plots are the index plot that renders individual sequences and the chronogram that renders the evolution of the cross-sectional state distribution along the

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SA is a longitudinal analysis approach that is holistic in the sense that it considers each sequence as a whole. SA is essentially exploratory. Broadly, SA provides a comprehensible overall picture of sets of sequences with the objective of characterizing the structure of the set of sequences,

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organized a special issue on sequence analysis in 2010, leading to what Aisenbrey and Fasang referred to as the "second wave of sequence analysis", which mainly extended optimal matching and introduced other techniques to compare sequences. Alongside sequence comparison, recent advances in SA

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In sociology, sequence techniques are most commonly employed in studies of patterns of life-course development, cycles, and life histories. There has been a great deal of work on the sequential development of careers, and there is increasing interest in how career trajectories intertwine with

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relate to non-individual entities, such as: public policies developing through successive policy stages across distinct arenas; sequences of symbolic or concrete interactions between national and international actors in diplomatic and military contexts; and development of organizations or

455: 235:, which emphasizes the emergence and influence of stable worldviews in guiding everyday action and thus produce predictable, orderly sequences of behavior. The resulting influence of routine as a structuring influence on social phenomena was first illustrated empirically by 4136:

Fillieule, O. and Blanchard, P. (2013). Fighting Together. Assessing Continuity and Change in Social Movement Organizations Through the Study of Constituencies' Heterogeneity. In A Political Sociology of Transnational Europe, chapter 4. ECPR Press,

1759:"De-standardization of Family-Life Trajectories of Young Adults: A Cross-National Comparison Using Sequence Analysis: Dé-standardisation des trajectoires de vie familiale des jeunes adultes: comparaison entre pays par analyse séquentielle" 227:, which holds that social actors' behaviors are predominantly structured by routines, and which in turn provides predictability and a sense of stability in an otherwise chaotic and rapidly moving social world. This idea is also echoed in 295:

political sequences that develop in more informal and fluid contexts, such as activists evolving across various causes and social movements, or voters navigating a political and ideological landscape across successive polls. Finally,

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Sequence length vs importance of recency: for example, when analyzing biographic sequences 40 year-long from age 1 to 40, one can only consider individuals born 40 years earlier and therefore the behavior of younger birth cohorts is

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Examples: OM, OMloc (localized OM), OMslen (spell-length sensitive OM), OMspell (OM of spell sequences), OMstran (OM of sequences of transitions), TWED (time-warp edit distance), HAM (Hamming and generalized Hamming), DHD (Dynamic

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Vermunt, J., Tran, B. and Magidson, J. (2008). Latent class models in longitudinal research. In S Menard (ed.), Handbook of Longitudinal Research: Design, Measurement, and Analysis, pp. 373–385. Elsevier, Burlington, MA. URL

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Liao, Tim F.; Bolano, Danilo; Brzinsky-Fay, Christian; Cornwell, Benjamin; Fasang, Anette Eva; Helske, Satu; Piccarreta, Raffaella; Raab, Marcel; Ritschard, Gilbert; Struffolino, Emanuela; Studer, Matthias (2022-08-26).

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Although dissimilarity-based methods play a central role in social SA, essentially because of their ability to preserve the holistic perspective, several other approaches also prove useful for analyzing sequence data.

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that is, formal, mostly hierarchical positions along which individuals progress in institutional environments, such as parliaments, cabinets, administrations, parties, unions or business organizations. We may name

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Borgna, Camilla; Struffolino, Emanuela (2018), Ritschard, Gilbert; Studer, Matthias (eds.), "Unpacking Configurational Dynamics: Sequence Analysis and Qualitative Comparative Analysis as a Mixed-Method Design",

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finding the salient characteristics of groups, identifying typical paths, comparing groups, and more generally studying how the sequences are related to covariates such as sex, birth cohort, or social origin.

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Brzinsky-Fay, C. (2018). Unused Resources: Sequence and Trajectory Indicators. In International Symposium on Sequence Analysis and Related Methods, Monte Verita, TI, Switzerland, October 10–12, 2018, .

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A crucial point when looking at state sequences is the timing scheme used to time align the sequences. This could be the historical calendar time, or a process time such as age, i.e. time since birth.

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also underlies social sequence analysts' interest in the linkages that exist between different social actors' schedules and ordered experiences, which has given rise to a considerable body of work on

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Although SA witnesses a steady inflow of methodological contributions that address the issues raised two decades ago, some pressing open issues remain. Among the most challenging, we can mention:

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Index plot of school to work transition by grade achieved at end of compulsory school. Sequences sorted by state from the start. Monthly data from McVicar & Anyadike-Danes (2002)

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Ritschard, Gilbert; Bussi, Margherita; O'Reilly, Jacqueline (2018), Ritschard, Gilbert; Studer, Matthias (eds.), "An Index of Precarity for Measuring Early Employment Insecurity",

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Pairwise dissimilarities between sequences serve to compare sequences and many advanced SA methods are based on these dissimilarities. The most popular dissimilarity measure is

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medoids or other representative sequences, define neighborhoods, measure the discrepancy of a set of sequences, proceed to ANOVA-like analyses, and grow regression trees.

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is generally something between a few hundreds and a few thousands, the alphabet size remains limited (most often less than 20), while sequence length rarely exceeds 100.

156:, as well as to a lack of fit between bioinformatic sequence methods and uniquely social phenomena. The debate has given rise to several methodological innovations (see 7257:"Trajectories of Union Transition in Emerging Adulthood: Socioeconomic Status and Race/Ethnicity Differences in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Cohort" 484:

For each (column) distribution we can compute characteristics such as entropy or modal state and look at how these values evolve over the positions (see pp 18–21).

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although specialized in fitting Markov models, this package provides useful plotting facilities for rendering multichannel sequences and transition probabilities;

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Given an alignment rule, a set of sequences can be represented in tabular form with sequences in rows and columns corresponding to the positions in the sequences.

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The first international conference dedicated to social-scientific research that uses sequence analysis methods – the Lausanne Conference on Sequence Analysis, or

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Examples: CHI2 and EUCLID defined as the average of respectively the Chi-squared and Euclidean distance between state distributions in successive sliding windows.

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In event sequences, positions do not convey any time information. Therefore event occurrence time must be explicitly provided (as a timestamp) when it matters.

7678:"Categorical state sequence analysis and regression tree to identify determinants of care trajectory in chronic disease: Example of end-stage renal disease" 1539:

Ritschard, Gilbert; Studer, Matthias; Buergin, Reto; Liao, Tim; Gabadinho, Alexis; Fonta, Pierre-Alexandre; Muller, Nicolas; Rousset, Patrick (2021-06-24),

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provides several specific tools such as heat maps of sequence data and the GIMSA method for measuring dissimilarities between multidomain sequences;

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of social reality, which as applied in most work implies that society is either static or that it is highly stochastic in a manner that conforms to

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Studer, Matthias (2013). "WeightedCluster Library Manual: A practical guide to creating typologies of trajectories in the social sciences with R".

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Up-to-date information on advances, methodological discussions, and recent relevant publications can be found on the Sequence Analysis Association

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concerned among others the visualization of sets of sequence data, the measure and analysis of the discrepancy of sequences, the identification of

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Ritschard, Gilbert; Studer, Matthias (2018), Ritschard, Gilbert; Studer, Matthias (eds.), "Sequence Analysis: Where Are We, Where Are We Going?",

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between social actors and their social contacts and larger communities. All of these theoretical orientations together warrant critiques of the

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Chronogram of school to work transition by grade achieved at end of compulsory school. Monthly data from McVicar & Anyadike-Danes (2002)

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Many of the methodological developments in sequence analysis came on the heels of a special section devoted to the topic in a 2000 issue of

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Rossignon, Florence; Studer, Matthias; Gauthier, Jacques-Antoine; Goff, Jean-Marie Le (2018), Ritschard, Gilbert; Studer, Matthias (eds.),

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Two main statistical computing environment offer tools to conduct a sequence analysis in the form of user-written packages: Stata and R.

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Chronogram (status proportion plot, state distribution plot): renders the sequence of cross-sectional distributions (SADI, SQ, TraMineR)

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Rohwer, G. and Pötter, U. (2002). TDA User's Manual. Software, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Fakultät für Sozialwissenschaften, Bochum. URL

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Effect of time varying covariates on trajectories: Competing Trajectories Analysis (CTA), and Sequence Analysis Multistate Model (SAMM)

4206:"The household effect on electoral participation. A contextual analysis of voter signatures from a French polling station (1982–2007)" 144: 7623:"Sequences of maladaptation: Preadolescent self-regulation, adolescent negative social interactions, and young adult psychopathology" 2846:"Life course analysis: two (complementary) cultures? Some reflections with examples from the analysis of the transition to adulthood" 152:(OM) edit distance for comparing sequences. In particular, sociologists objected to the descriptive and data-reducing orientation of 4424:

Ritschard, Gilbert; Gabadinho, Alexis; Studer, Matthias; Müller, Nicolas S. (2009), Ras, Zbigniew W.; Dardzinska, Agnieszka (eds.),

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To describe such data, we may look at the columns and consider the cross-sectional state distributions at the successive positions.

7960:"Urban land use transitions: Examining change over 19 years using sequence analysis. The case of South-East Queensland, Australia" 731:), LCP (from length of longest common prefix), NMS (number of matching subsequences), and NMSMST and SVRspell two variants of NMS. 515:

We can compute characteristics of the individual sequences and examine the cross-sectional distribution of these characteristics.

7582:"Intense, turbulent, or wallowing in the mire: A longitudinal study of cross-course online tactics, strategies, and trajectories" 1159:

versatile clustering package with original tools for grouping identical sequences and rendering hierarchical trees of sequences;

924: 667: 7215:"Sequence Analysis and Transition to Adulthood: An Exploration of the Access to Reproduction in Nineteenth-Century East Belgium" 6579:"Estimating the Relationship between Time-varying Covariates and Trajectories: The Sequence Analysis Multistate Model Procedure" 6023:"Classifying life course trajectories: a comparison of latent class and sequence analysis: Classifying Life Course Trajectories" 3896:"Estimating the Relationship between Time-varying Covariates and Trajectories: The Sequence Analysis Multistate Model Procedure" 763:

Clusters as dependent or independent variables in regression analysis: study of relationships with other variables of interest.

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where each sequence is represented as a horizontal stacked bar or line is the basic plot for rendering individual sequences.

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Proceedings of the International Conference on Sequence Analysis and Related Methods (LaCOSA II), Lausanne, June 8-10, 2016

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Le Meur, Nolwenn; Vigneau, Cécile; Lefort, Mathilde; Lebbah, Saïd; Jais, Jean-Philippe; Daugas, Eric; Bayat, Sahar (2019).

7622: 5937:"Intergenerational transmission of behavioural patterns: How similar are parents' and children's demographic trajectories?" 4333: 4236: 3402: 8309: 8244: 4432:, Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol. 223, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 155–175, 8274: 7500: 7454:"Legislative processes as sequences: exploring temporal trajectories of Italian law-making by means of sequence analysis" 6262: 79:

Sequence analysis methods were first imported into the social sciences from the information and biological sciences (see

8339: 8183: 4005:"Le coeur des affaires de la zone euro.: Une analyse structurale et séquentielle des élites économiques transnationales" 6806:"Evaluating the Effects of Missing Values and Mixed Data Types on Social Sequence Clustering Using t-SNE Visualization" 4089:"The winners of legislative mandate: An analysis of post-parliamentary career positions in Germany and the Netherlands" 2001:"Holistic trajectories: a study of combined employment, housing and family careers by using multiple-sequence analysis" 8246: 3614:"De-Standardization of the Life Course: What it Might Mean? And if it Means Anything, Whether it Actually Took Place?" 872: 88: 50: 7371:"Gender, education, and family life courses in East and West Germany: Insights from new sequence analysis techniques" 6701:, Life Course Research and Social Policies, vol. 10, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 167–184, 4675:, Life Course Research and Social Policies, vol. 10, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 279–295, 4633:, Life Course Research and Social Policies, vol. 10, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 261–278, 7418:, Life Course Research and Social Policies, vol. 2, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 213–227, 7221:, Life Course Research and Social Policies, vol. 2, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 151–167, 6491:, Life Course Research and Social Policies, vol. 10, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 83–100, 6227:, Life Course Research and Social Policies, vol. 2, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 231–248, 4970:, Life Course Research and Social Policies, vol. 2, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 231–248, 4859:, Life Course Research and Social Policies, vol. 2, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 265–284, 4387:, Life Course Research and Social Policies, vol. 2, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 213–227, 2623:, Life course Research and Social Policies, vol. 2, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 265–284, 8329: 5318:, Life Course Research and Social Policies, vol. 2, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 75–103, 728: 5598:"Comparing Groups of Life-Course Sequences Using the Bayesian Information Criterion and the Likelihood-Ratio Test" 4629:

Manzoni, Anna; Mooi-Reci, Irma (2018), Ritschard, Gilbert; Studer, Matthias (eds.), "Measuring Sequence Quality",

2884:, Life Course Research and Social Policies, vol. 10, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 1–11, 7213:

Oris, Michel; Ritschard, Gilbert (2014), Blanchard, Philippe; Bühlmann, Felix; Gauthier, Jacques-Antoine (eds.),

1240: 6911: 6535:"Understanding trends in family formation trajectories: An application of Competing Trajectories Analysis (CTA)" 5017:"What matters in differences between life trajectories: a comparative review of sequence dissimilarity measures" 2726:

Gendered Life Courses, Between Standardization and Individualization: A European Approach Applied to Switzerland

2565:"New Life for Old Ideas: The "Second Wave" of Sequence Analysis Bringing the "Course" Back Into the Life Course" 1219: 1124: 791: 768: 613: 260:

theory that experiencing similar activities, experiences, and statuses serves as a link between social actors.

178: 61: 3767:"A Sequence-Analysis Approach to the Study of the Transition to Adulthood in Low- and Middle-Income Countries" 164:

and Balazs Vedres proposed the term "social sequence analysis" to distinguish the approach from bioinformatic

6912:"A methodological essay on the application of social sequence analysis to the study of creative trajectories" 6098: 160:

below) that address limitations of early sequence comparison methods developed in the 20th century. In 2006,

6008: 663: 132: 7168:"The Temporal Rhythm of Alcohol Consumption: On the Development of Young People's Weekly Drinking Patterns" 53:, SA has gained much popularity after the release of dedicated software such as the SQ and SADI addons for 8319: 8261: 7501:"Applying Sequence Analysis in Higher Education Research: A Life Course Perspective on Study Trajectories" 786: 186: 7410:

Wilson, Matthew Charles (2014), Blanchard, Philippe; Bühlmann, Felix; Gauthier, Jacques-Antoine (eds.),

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Ritschard, Gilbert; Bürgin, Reto; Studer, Matthias (2013). McArdle, John J.; Ritschard, Gilbert (eds.).

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Brzinsky-Fay, Christian (2014), Blanchard, Philippe; Bühlmann, Felix; Gauthier, Jacques-Antoine (eds.),

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Wilson, Matthew Charles (2014), Blanchard, Philippe; Bühlmann, Felix; Gauthier, Jacques-Antoine (eds.),

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Brzinsky-Fay, Christian (2014), Blanchard, Philippe; Bühlmann, Felix; Gauthier, Jacques-Antoine (eds.),

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in the 1980s, and they have since developed in ways that are unique to the social sciences. Scholars in

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Despite some connections, the aims and methods of SA in social sciences strongly differ from those of

26: 8324: 7793: 6338:"The Mixture Transition Distribution Model for High-Order Markov Chains and Non-Gaussian Time Series" 5073: 4041: 2471:"Some Comments on "Sequence Analysis and Optimal Matching Methods in Sociology: Review and Prospect"" 1958: 775: 248: 182: 2187: 1276: 415: 8314: 8208:. Life Course Research and Social Policies. Vol. 10. Cham: Springer International Publishing. 6962:"Residential Trajectories: Using Optimal Alignment to Reveal The Structure of Residential Mobility" 6381: 5738: 5199: 5064:

Levenshtein, V. (1966). "Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions, and reversals".

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Plot of multidomain/multichannel sequences grouped by channels (TraMineR, seqHMM) or by individuals

232: 8153:. Life Course Research and Social Policies. Vol. 2. Cham: Springer International Publishing. 6485:"Sequence History Analysis (SHA): Estimating the Effect of Past Trajectories on an Upcoming Event" 4916: 4471:"Predicting successful and unsuccessful transitions from school to work by using sequence methods" 7989: 7899: 7819: 7781: 7762: 7713: 7658: 7603: 7562: 7542: 7541:

Fan, Yizhou; Jovanović, Jelena; Saint, John; Jiang, Yuhang; Wang, Qiong; Gašević, Dragan (2022).

7481: 7370: 7294: 7195: 7148: 7093: 7036: 6989: 6937: 6835: 6783: 6732: 6618: 6556: 6510: 6443: 6201: 6175: 6144: 6052: 5989: 5936: 5917: 5860: 5813: 5766: 5719: 5672: 5625: 5547: 5500: 5440: 5393: 5292: 5258: 5227: 5180: 5123: 5046: 4944: 4794: 4737: 4654: 4579: 4498: 4361: 4311: 4264: 4205: 4116: 4069: 3980: 3935: 3876: 3812: 3747: 3676:"Changes in the Order of Family Life Events in 20th-Century Europe: A Cross-Regional Perspective" 3644: 3613: 3545: 3526: 3472: 3452: 3430: 3344: 3137: 3109: 3067: 3006: 2958: 2905: 2845: 2783: 2695: 2592: 2498: 2451: 2371: 2262: 2215: 2168: 2116: 2052: 2030: 1932: 1885: 1838: 1788: 1728: 1637: 1518: 1456: 1390: 1338: 1245: 1224: 964: 823: 80: 5880:"Comparison of two approaches in multichannel sequence analysis using the Swiss Household Panel" 5566: 5310:

Halpin, Brendan (2014), Blanchard, Philippe; Bühlmann, Felix; Gauthier, Jacques-Antoine (eds.),

3575:

Dribe, Martin; Manfredini, Matteo; Oris, Michel (2014). Lundh, Christer; Kuroso, Satomi (eds.).

2089:"Off-Scheduling within Dual-Earner Couples: An Unequal and Negative Externality for Family Time" 1277:"Sequences of Social Events: Concepts and Methods for the Analysis of Order in Social Processes" 8118: 6854: 8217: 8162: 8053: 7981: 7940: 7891: 7754: 7705: 7697: 7650: 7642: 7516: 7473: 7427: 7351: 7333: 7286: 7230: 7187: 7140: 7132: 7085: 7077: 7028: 6981: 6927: 6892: 6874: 6827: 6775: 6722: 6678: 6660: 6610: 6500: 6401: 6359: 6278: 6236: 6193: 6136: 5909: 5901: 5852: 5805: 5758: 5711: 5664: 5617: 5539: 5492: 5432: 5337: 5284: 5276: 5219: 5172: 5115: 5038: 4979: 4936: 4868: 4833: 4786: 4729: 4686: 4644: 4571: 4490: 4470: 4441: 4396: 4353: 4303: 4256: 4186: 4168: 4108: 4088: 4061: 4022: 3970: 3927: 3868: 3804: 3786: 3739: 3697: 3592: 3422: 3383: 3325:"Employment Schedules Among Dual-Earner Spouses and the Division of Household Labor by Gender" 3303: 3280: 3270: 3245: 3235: 3210: 3200: 3175: 3165: 3129: 3059: 2996: 2950: 2895: 2821: 2811: 2775: 2687: 2632: 2584: 2540: 2490: 2470: 2443: 2423: 2363: 2319: 2301: 2254: 2207: 2160: 2108: 2022: 1978: 1924: 1877: 1830: 1780: 1720: 1700: 1676: 1629: 1510: 1448: 1382: 1296: 1250: 1229: 673: 202: 169: 165: 136: 116: 112: 68: 39: 17: 7872:"Are we what we do? Exploring group behaviour through user-defined event-sequence similarity" 7543:"Revealing the regulation of learning strategies of MOOC retakers: A learning analytic study" 6219:

Bison, Ivano (2014), Blanchard, Philippe; Bühlmann, Felix; Gauthier, Jacques-Antoine (eds.),

6164:"Clustering longitudinal life-course sequences using mixtures of exponential-distance models" 6071: 4962:

Bison, Ivano (2014), Blanchard, Philippe; Bühlmann, Felix; Gauthier, Jacques-Antoine (eds.),

1810: 8209: 8154: 8124: 8043: 7971: 7930: 7883: 7850: 7839:"Car dependent practices: Findings from a sequence pattern mining study of UK time use data" 7809: 7801: 7744: 7689: 7634: 7593: 7554: 7508: 7465: 7419: 7390: 7382: 7341: 7325: 7276: 7268: 7222: 7179: 7124: 7067: 7020: 6973: 6919: 6882: 6866: 6817: 6765: 6712: 6702: 6668: 6652: 6600: 6590: 6546: 6492: 6435: 6393: 6349: 6316: 6270: 6228: 6185: 6126: 6093: 6083: 6072:"Comparing methods of classifying life courses: sequence analysis and latent class analysis" 6047: 6042: 6034: 5979: 5948: 5891: 5844: 5797: 5750: 5703: 5656: 5609: 5578: 5531: 5484: 5424: 5383: 5375: 5327: 5319: 5268: 5211: 5162: 5154: 5107: 5028: 4971: 4928: 4860: 4825: 4776: 4768: 4721: 4676: 4634: 4563: 4532: 4482: 4433: 4388: 4345: 4295: 4248: 4217: 4176: 4160: 4100: 4053: 4012: 3962: 3954: 3917: 3907: 3858: 3848: 3794: 3778: 3731: 3687: 3656: 3625: 3584: 3557: 3546:"Life Course Data In Demography And Social Sciences: Statistical And Data-Mining Approaches" 3518: 3464: 3414: 3375: 3336: 3119: 3049: 2988: 2940: 2885: 2857: 2765: 2679: 2624: 2576: 2532: 2482: 2435: 2402: 2355: 2309: 2293: 2246: 2199: 2152: 2100: 2064: 2012: 1970: 1916: 1869: 1858:"Measuring Resemblance in Sequence Data: An Optimal Matching Analysis of Musicians' Careers" 1822: 1770: 1712: 1668: 1619: 1609: 1574: 1500: 1438: 1428: 1372: 1330: 1288: 1209: 1194: 755: 687: 647:

Position-wise group typical states, i.e., with highest implication strength (TraMineRextras)

629:

Plot of time series of cross-sectional indicators (entropy, modal state, ...) (SQ, TraMineR)

476: 153: 149: 8267: 7871: 7677: 7453: 7167: 7112: 6961: 6162:

Murphy, Keefe; Murphy, T. Brendan; Piccarreta, Raffaella; Gormley, I. Claire (2021-07-08).

5832: 5785: 5597: 5519: 5472: 5412: 5142: 5095: 4813: 4756: 4551: 2667: 2564: 2140: 7733:"Investigating call record data using sequence analysis to inform adaptive survey designs" 6261:

Cornwell, Benjamin; Watkins, Kate (2015-07-08), Thye, Shane R.; Lawler, Edward J. (eds.),

244: 236: 228: 198: 7256: 6804:

Lazar, Alina; Jin, Ling; Spurlock, C. Anna; Wu, Kesheng; Sim, Alex; Todd, Annika (2019).

6163: 4710:"The analysis of early life courses: Complex descriptions of the transition to adulthood" 3379: 8268:

Laurent Lesnard's Stata plugin for sequence analysis using the dynamic Hamming distance.

7805: 7797: 7411: 6887: 6855:"Identifying and Qualifying Deviant Cases in Clusters of Sequences: The Why and The How" 6220: 5077: 4963: 4852: 4380: 4149:"Transnational organizing: Issue professionals in environmental sustainability networks" 3577:"The roads to reproduction. Comparing life course trajectories in preindustrial Eurasia" 2616: 1672: 599:

Mean time in the different states (overall state distribution) and their standard errors

38:

is concerned with the analysis of sets of categorical sequences that typically describe

8288: 8030:

Mas, Jean-François; Nogueira de Vasconcelos, Rodrigo; Franca-Rocha, Washington (2019).

7346: 7313: 7214: 6673: 6640: 6484: 5737:

Gauthier, Jacques-Antoine; Widmer, Eric D.; Bucher, Philipp; Notredame, Cédric (2010).

5691: 5379: 4425: 4181: 4148: 3799: 3766: 3719: 2980: 2810:. Quantitative Application in the Social Sciences. Vol. 190. : Sage Publications. 2314: 2281: 2088: 1904: 1857: 252: 194: 161: 7024: 4237:"The Welfare State as Transnational Event: Evidence from Sequences of Policy Adoption" 3629: 3561: 3468: 2929:"Holistic analysis of the life course: Methodological challenges and new perspectives" 2861: 2526: 2343: 2188:"Time for Children, One's Spouse and Oneself among Parents Who Work Nonstandard Hours" 507: 8298: 8203: 8148: 7993: 7766: 7607: 7566: 7512: 7485: 7298: 7199: 7097: 7040: 6993: 6941: 6787: 6736: 6622: 6560: 6465: 6274: 6205: 6056: 6038: 5993: 5921: 5896: 5864: 5770: 5754: 5676: 5660: 5629: 5582: 5413:"Setting Cost in Optimal Matching to Uncover Contemporaneous Socio-Temporal Patterns" 5215: 5127: 4948: 4741: 4658: 4607: 4583: 4502: 4315: 4268: 4120: 4073: 3984: 3939: 3880: 3816: 3751: 3588: 3476: 3434: 3010: 2962: 2787: 2721: 2502: 2455: 2407: 2390: 2344:"Social Times of Network Spaces: Network Sequences and Foreign Investment in Hungary" 2266: 2250: 2219: 2172: 2120: 2034: 2017: 2000: 1936: 1889: 1842: 1732: 1641: 1614: 1597: 1578: 914:

Effect of past trajectories on the hazard of an event: Sequence History Analysis, SHA

257: 224: 108: 8128: 7823: 7717: 7662: 6839: 6514: 6148: 6115:"ClickClust : An R Package for Model-Based Clustering of Categorical Sequences" 5967: 5817: 5723: 5551: 5504: 5397: 5296: 5231: 5184: 5050: 4798: 4606:

Gabadinho, Alexis; Ritschard, Gilbert; Studer, Matthias; Müller, Nicolas S. (2010).

4365: 4221: 3141: 3071: 2909: 2699: 2666:

Studer, Matthias; Ritschard, Gilbert; Gabadinho, Alexis; Müller, Nicolas S. (2011).

2596: 1792: 1540: 1487:

Gabadinho, Alexis; Ritschard, Gilbert; Müller, Nicolas S.; Studer, Matthias (2011).

1460: 1394: 7903: 7621:

Laceulle, Odilia M.; Veenstra, René; Vollebergh, Wilma A. M.; Ormel, Johan (2019).

7580:

Saqr, Mohammed; López-Pernas, Sonsoles; Jovanović, Jelena; Gašević, Dragan (2023).

7152: 5444: 4284:"Local Sequential Patterns: The Structure of Lynching in the Deep South, 1882-1930" 2375: 1522: 1292: 1204: 1199: 865: 829: 190: 100: 8008: 7782:"Weather effects on human mobility: a study using multi-channel sequence analysis" 7749: 7732: 7558: 6397: 4057: 3765:

Pesando, Luca Maria; Barban, Nicola; Sironi, Maria; Furstenberg, Frank F. (2021).

3403:"Blocking the Future: New Solutions for Old Problems in Historical Social Science" 2720:

Gabadinho, Alexis; Ritschard, Gilbert (2013). Levy, René; Widmer, Eric D. (eds.).

1701:"Sequence Analysis and Optimal Matching Methods in Sociology: Review and Prospect" 803: 454: 357:

of the sequences (that could be different for each sequence). In social sciences,

8095: 7598: 7581: 7423: 6707: 6232: 5692:"Ascription into Achievement: Models of Career Systems at Lloyds Bank, 1890-1970" 4975: 4932: 4864: 4757:"Visualizing Sequences in the Social Sciences: Relative Frequency Sequence Plots" 4681: 4639: 4392: 4004: 2628: 8117:

Emery, Kevin; Guinchard, Anthony; Berchtold, Andre; Taher, Kamyar (2024-03-27),

7226: 6923: 6496: 6305:"A life history graph approach to the analysis and comparison of life histories" 6221:"Sequence as Network: An Attempt to Apply Network Analysis to Sequence Analysis" 5323: 4964:"Sequence as Network: An Attempt to Apply Network Analysis to Sequence Analysis" 4437: 3966: 2992: 2890: 2486: 2439: 1716: 487: 8072: 7412:"Governance Built Step-by-Step: Analysing Sequences to Explain Democratization" 7386: 7329: 6870: 6770: 6753: 6551: 6534: 6321: 6304: 5952: 5363: 5246: 4608:"Indice de complexité pour le tri et la comparaison de séquences catégorielles" 4381:"Governance Built Step-by-Step: Analysing Sequences to Explain Democratization" 3735: 3660: 3576: 2945: 2928: 2068: 1959:"Lost in Transition? Labour Market Entry Sequences of School Leavers in Europe" 1826: 1433: 1416: 1377: 1360: 8283: 8213: 8158: 8147:

Blanchard, Philippe; Bühlmann, Felix; Gauthier, Jacques-Antoine, eds. (2014).

7976: 7959: 7855: 7838: 7638: 7113:"Caught in a Bad Romance: Adolescent Romantic Relationships and Mental Health" 6656: 5458: 5311: 4709: 4252: 3853: 3836: 3418: 3038:"Analyzing State Sequences with Probabilistic Suffix Trees: The PST R Package" 2825: 2770: 2753: 1775: 1758: 1214: 799: 473:

of a set of sequences renders these successive cross-sectional distributions.

104: 92: 8205:

Sequence Analysis and Related Approaches: Innovative Methods and Applications

8057: 7985: 7944: 7935: 7918: 7895: 7887: 7758: 7701: 7693: 7646: 7477: 7469: 7337: 7290: 7191: 7183: 7136: 7128: 7081: 7032: 6985: 6977: 6878: 6831: 6779: 6664: 6614: 6595: 6578: 6405: 6363: 6197: 6140: 5905: 5856: 5848: 5809: 5801: 5762: 5715: 5668: 5621: 5613: 5543: 5535: 5496: 5488: 5436: 5428: 5280: 5223: 5176: 5158: 5119: 5111: 5042: 4940: 4837: 4829: 4790: 4772: 4733: 4575: 4567: 4494: 4357: 4307: 4260: 4172: 4164: 4112: 4065: 4026: 3931: 3912: 3895: 3872: 3790: 3743: 3701: 3426: 3387: 3133: 3063: 2779: 2691: 2683: 2588: 2580: 2536: 2494: 2447: 2367: 2305: 2297: 2258: 2211: 2164: 2156: 2112: 2026: 1982: 1928: 1905:"Career Patterns of Executive Women in Finance: An Optimal Matching Analysis" 1881: 1834: 1784: 1724: 1680: 1514: 1452: 1386: 1300: 533:

Number of transitions (length of sequence of distinct successive states, DSS)

301:

institutions, such as pathways of countries towards democracy (Wilson 2014).

7072: 7055: 6354: 6337: 5247:"Time Warp Edit Distance with Stiffness Adjustment for Time Series Matching" 5143:"Optimal Matching Analysis and Life-Course Data: The Importance of Duration" 4486: 4104: 3718:

Pelletier, David; Bignami-Van Assche, Simona; Simard-Gendron, Anaïs (2020).

3284: 3249: 3214: 3179: 385: 120: 96: 8257: 7709: 7654: 7355: 7314:"The Heterogeneity of Partnership Trajectories to Childlessness in Germany" 7144: 7089: 6896: 6682: 6088: 5913: 5786:"A "Global Interdependence" Approach to Multidimensional Sequence Analysis" 5288: 4894: 4814:"Comment: On the Use of Globally Interdependent Multiple Sequence Analysis" 4536: 4190: 4017: 4003:

Blanchard, Philippe; Dudouet, François-Xavier; Vion, Antoine (2015-10-15).

3808: 2954: 2805: 2323: 1633: 1281:

Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History

1173: 7281: 6577:

Studer, Matthias; Struffolino, Emanuela; Fasang, Anette E. (August 2018).

6263:"Sequence-Network Analysis: A New Framework for Studying Action in Groups" 6168:

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society)

6131: 5968:"Using Sequence Analysis to Quantify How Strongly Life Courses Are Linked" 5649:

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society)

5272: 5021:

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society)

4475:

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society)

4299: 3124: 3054: 2722:"Searching for typical life trajectories, applied to childbirth histories" 2005:

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society)

1505: 6470:

Contemporary Issues in Exploratory Data Mining in the Behavioral Sciences

6009:

https://www.statisticalinnovations.com/wp-content/uploads/Vermunt2008.pdf

4349: 3364:"Narrative Explanation: An Alternative to Variable-Centered Explanation?" 3264: 3231:

The constitution of society : outline of the theory of structuration

3229: 3194: 3159: 3098:"Mixture Hidden Markov Models for Sequence Data: The seqHMM Package in R" 1974: 717:

Data-driven costs: based on transition probabilities or state frequencies

653:

Transition plot (SQ; Gmisc) and plot of transition probabilities (seqHMM)

310: 8048: 8031: 7395: 6605: 5567:"Correspondence analysis, with an extension towards nominal time series" 4917:"A Decorated Parallel Coordinate Plot for Categorical Longitudinal Data" 4781: 3922: 939:

Sequences of different lengths, truncated sequences, and missing values.

620:

Index plot: renders the set of individual sequences (SADI, SQ, TraMineR)

8032:"Analysis of High Temporal Resolution Land Use/Land Cover Trajectories" 7814: 7272: 6717: 6189: 6027:

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series C (Applied Statistics)

5645:"Clustering work and family trajectories by using a divisive algorithm" 5388: 5033: 5016: 4725: 4521:"Early Career Patterns: A Comparison of Great Britain and West Germany" 3863: 3782: 3530: 3494:. Translated by Wolff, Kurt H.; Bendix, Reinhard. New York: Free Press. 3348: 2203: 1624: 1176:– was held in Lausanne, Switzerland in June 2012. A second conference ( 708:

Constant costs (all substitution costs identical and single indel cost)

6447: 6423: 5332: 5167: 4040:

Ohmura, Tamaki; Bailer, Stefanie; Meiβner, Peter; Selb, Peter (2018).

3835:

Ritschard, Gilbert; Liao, Tim F.; Struffolino, Emanuela (2023-04-25).

3692: 3506: 3324: 2424:"But What Have You Done for Us Lately?: Commentary on Abbott and Tsay" 1443: 1342: 1318: 641:

Mean time in the different states and their standard errors (TraMineR)

2053:"The de-standardization of the life course: Are men and women equal?" 7369:

Struffolino, Emanuela; Studer, Matthias; Fasang, Anette Eva (2016).

6822: 6805: 6641:"Validating Sequence Analysis Typologies Using Parametric Bootstrap" 6114: 3675: 3522: 3340: 3097: 3037: 1488: 7731:

Durrant, Gabriele B.; Maslovskaya, Olga; Smith, Peter W.F. (2019).

6758:

The Stata Journal: Promoting Communications on Statistics and Stata

6439: 6180: 5984: 5707: 5263: 4042:"Party animals, career changers and other pathways into parliament" 3894:

Studer, Matthias; Struffolino, Emanuela; Fasang, Anette E. (2018).

3114: 2359: 2104: 1920: 1873: 1421:

The Stata Journal: Promoting Communications on Statistics and Stata

1365:

The Stata Journal: Promoting Communications on Statistics and Stata

1359:

Brzinsky-Fay, Christian; Kohler, Ulrich; Luniak, Magdalena (2006).

1334: 7009:"The Social Structure of Time: Emerging Trends and New Directions" 6269:, vol. 32, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp. 31–63, 5739:"1. Multichannel Sequence Analysis Applied to Social Science Data" 4087:

Claessen, Clint; Bailer, Stefanie; Turner-Zwinkels, Tomas (2021).

1815:

The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

1105: 506: 486: 475: 453: 414: 54: 25: 3837:"Strategies for Multidomain Sequence Analysis in Social Research" 3720:"Measuring Life Course Complexity with Dynamic Sequence Analysis" 8239: 7007:

Cornwell, Benjamin; Gershuny, Jonathan; Sullivan, Oriel (2019).

6533:

Studer, Matthias; Liefbroer, Aart C.; Mooyaart, Jarl E. (2018).

3581:

Similarity in Difference. Marriage in Europe and Asia, 1700-1900

3196:

Changing times : work and leisure in postindustrial society

1763:

European Journal of Population / Revue européenne de Démographie

1181: 1177: 951: 240: 64:

package with its companions TraMineRextras and WeightedCluster.

8249:'s 1995 review of sociological approaches to sequence analysis. 3234:(1st pbk. ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. 2391:"Concurrent partnerships and transmission dynamics in networks" 771:(principal coordinates): numerical representation of sequences. 7919:"Three Histories of Greening and Whiteness in American Cities" 5251:

IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence

3298:

Sokin, Pitirim Aleksandrovich; Berger, Clarence Quinn (1939).

3266:

Distinction : a social critique of the judgement of taste

1489:"Analyzing and Visualizing State Sequences in R with TraMineR" 694:

There are roughly three categories of dissimilarity measures:

7870:

Vrotsou, Katerina; Ynnerman, Anders; Cooper, Matthew (2014).

7837:

Mattioli, Giulio; Anable, Jillian; Vrotsou, Katerina (2016).

7780:

Brum-Bastos, Vanessa S.; Long, Jed A.; Demšar, Urška (2018).

886:

Rendering of event sequences (parallel coordinate plots, ...)

864:

Markovian and other transition distribution models. See also

7964:

Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science

6910:

Formilan, Giovanni; Ferriani, Simone; Cattani, Gino (2020),

6303:

Fitzhugh, Sean M.; Butts, Carter T.; Pixley, Joy E. (2015).

4204:

Buton, François; Lemercier, Claire; Mariot, Nicolas (2012).

3269:. Richard Nice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 2979:

Barban, Nicola; Sironi, Maria (2019), Schoen, Robert (ed.),

1131: 1121:

is dedicated to imputation of missing elements in sequences.

58: 8252: 8150: