[Traminer-users] linking short sequences with custers based on long sequences

[Matthias Studer]

Dear Rimantas Vosylis,

Here are my thought about your issue. You are studying an outcome of the trajectories, whereas sequence analysis is often used to study how starting condition influence the following trajectories. This makes big differences.

I think you should develop the exact assumption you are making. Why do you think that there is a relationship between trajectories and psychosocial indicators exactly (please find some example below)?


-          Previous semester influence current psychosocial indicator. In this case, you could align the sequence to the end of observation and add the state “in school/education” for unobserved semester (at the beginning of the sequence). You’ll have complete trajectories in both cases. Depending on the issue, this may be a good solution. Concretely, this would lead to recode trajectory:

§  22333445777788

o   To

§  111111111122333445777788

o   Where state 1 is being in school

o   Your sequence would describe the last 24 semesters in all cases.


-          How are whole trajectories and psychosocial indicators linked from an holistic perspective? These kind of research questions are generally too vague for me. The research question assume that you measure complete trajectories, hence, you need predicting the end of incomplete trajectories. In order to render the uncertainty of the predictions, I use multiple imputation in some ways (but I never tried). I know Brendan Halpin has written an article about that. Strategy A goes in the same direction but do not render the uncertainty of the predictions.



-          I think strategy B may be meaningful because it may render the differences (in life history) between having 25 or 30 years old. However, you should be more precise about your assumption.


Because I can only think about the relation you are studying (trajectories and psychosocial indicators) using the first research question, I would use that method. If you were studying the results of starting conditions (the effect of the situation at the end of education) I would go toward multiple imputation.

Hope this helps.
Matthias

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