Social Sequence Analysis Methods and Applications

Social sequence analysis includes a diverse and rapidly growing body of methods that social scientists have developed to help study complex ordered social processes, including chains of transitions, trajectories and other ordered phenomena. Social sequence analysis is not limited by content or time scale and can be used in many different fields, including sociology, communication, information science and psychology. Social Sequence Analysis aims to bring together both foundational and recent theoretical and methodological work on social sequences from the last thirty years. A unique reference book for a new generation of social scientists, this book will aid demographers who study life-course trajectories and family histories, sociologists who study career paths or work/family schedules, communication scholars and micro-sociologists who study conversation, interaction structures and small-group dynamics, as well as social epidemiologists.

Part I. Introduction: 1. Sequence analysis in the social sciences; Part II. Theoretical Background: 2. Theoretical foundations of social sequence analysis; Part III. Social Sequence Analysis Concepts and Techniques: 3. Sequence analysis concepts and data; 4. Detecting sequence structure; 5. Whole-sequence comparison methods; Part IV. New Directions in Social Sequence Analysis: 6. Network methods for sequence analysis; 7. Social microsequence analysis; Part V. Conclusions: 8. The promise of social sequence analysis.

Benjamin Cornwell is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Cornell University, New York. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Chicago. His research has been published in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review and Social Forces. His work has been covered in many media outlets, including CNN, the New York Times, MSNBC and the Los Angeles Times. In 2012, he taught one of the first graduate courses on social sequence analysis in the United States at Cornell University. He has most recently been awarded the 2017 Leo Goodman Award for Outstanding Early Career Researcher.