Fixed Effects Regression Methods for Longitudinal Data Using SAS

5.1. Introduction

In both the social and biomedical sciences, there is a great deal of interest in regression models for predicting the occurrence and timing of events. Medical researchers primarily study deaths, but they may also model such events as infections or tumor recurrences. Social scientists are interested in a wide array of events, including births, marriages, divorces, job terminations, promotions, arrests, residence changes, and so on.

Statistical methods for modeling events are often called survival analysis because they were originally developed by biostatisticians to analyze the occurrence of deaths. But I prefer the term event history analysis, commonly used among social scientists, because it more aptly expresses the generality ...