A transition-oriented approach to optimal matching


Biemann, Torsten



DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9531.2011.01235.x
URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-...
Additional URL: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-953...
Document Type: Article
Year of publication: 2011
The title of a journal, publication series: Sociological Methodology
Volume: 41
Issue number: 1
Page range: 195-221
Place of publication: Thousand Oaks, Calif. [u.a.]
Publishing house: Sage Publ.
ISSN: 0081-1750 , 1467-9531
Related URLs:
Publication language: English
Institution: Business School > ABWL, Personalmanagement u. Führung (Biemann 2013-)
Subject: 330 Economics
Abstract: Optimal matching (OM) is a method that assesses sequence similarity. It was originally developed to study protein and DNA sequences and was later transferred to the social sciences where it was applied accordingly. However, there is an ongoing debate on the adequacy of its use in the social sciences, as a superficial transfer might not respond to the significant differences between typical sequences in biological and social settings. In this paper, I elaborate on these differences and introduce a distinction between two sequence types—namely, common ancestors and unfolding processes. While the first sequence type is typically found in biological settings (e.g., DNA sequences), the latter applies to most sequences studied in the social sciences (e.g., careers). Based on this distinction, I present a new way of coding sequences as an extension to conventional OM analyses and demonstrate its usefulness in simulated and empirical examples. The paper concludes with a discussion of this new approach and its integration into previous extensions of OM.




Dieser Datensatz wurde nicht während einer Tätigkeit an der Universität Mannheim veröffentlicht, dies ist eine Externe Publikation.




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