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Surviving Phases: Introducing Multistate Survival Models

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Shawna K. Metzger  and
Benjamin T. Jones
Shawna K. Metzger*
Affiliation:
University Scholars Programme 18 College Avenue East #02-03 Cinnamon West Learn Lobe Singapore 138593 Singapore
Benjamin T. Jones
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science P.O. Box 1848 University of Mississippi University, MS 38677, USA e-mail: btjones1@olemiss.edu
*
e-mail: smetzger@nus.edu.sg
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Abstract

Many political processes consist of a series of theoretically meaningful transitions across discrete phases that occur through time. Yet political scientists are often theoretically interested in studying not just individual transitions between phases, but also the duration that subjects spend within phases, as well as the effect of covariates on subjects’ trajectories through the process's multiple phases. We introduce the multistate survival model to political scientists, which is capable of modeling precisely this type of situation. The model is appealing because of its ability to accommodate multiple forms of causal complexity that unfold over time. In particular, we highlight three attractive features of multistate models: transition-specific baseline hazards, transition-specific covariate effects, and the ability to estimate transition probabilities. We provide two applications to illustrate these features.

Type
Articles
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , Autumn 2016 , pp. 457 - 477
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

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Footnotes

Authors’ note: The authors’ names appear in reverse alphabetical order. This paper was presented at the 2015 Visions in Methodology conference. We thank Jan Box-Steffensmeier, Sarah Cormack-Patton, Luke Keele, Diana O’Brien, Steve Oliver, and Doug Rice for feedback on earlier drafts. We bear sole responsibility for any remaining errors and shortcomings. All analyses are performed using R 3.3.1. Replication material is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OZ7YZ1. Supplementary materials for this article are available on the Political Analysis Web site.

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