Social data and response models. The case of crime rates

✍ Scribed by Gosta Carlsson

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1975
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 785 KB
• Volume: 9
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0033-5177
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00119979

✦ Synopsis

Sociology and Over-Time Data

Our theme is the analysis of social data subject to change through time, and the explanation or forecasting of change. The emphasis will be laid on aggregate change as it appears in many socio-demographic series; in a later section crime rates will be used as an illustration. Now, there is little need to belabour the point that the systematic and quantitative study of change is much neglected in sociology and the tools largely lacking. The discipline in which over-time data are used extensively and approached with methods of considerable power and refinement is obviously economics. Sociologists might then borrow from economists and econometricians the necessary concepts and procedures as they are doing in other areas. For reasons that will be briefly mentioned later this is not a solution without its questionable aspects. At least, there would seem to be some virtue in trying to develop an alternative strategy, as will be done in the following pages. It is designed both for the retrospective analysis of past change, and prospective uses, prediction or forecasting. The latter aim deserves some further and special comment.