Event history analysis is a set of techniques for the study of the timing of various kinds of events. Events may take the form of either state transitions or event recurrences (Hannan 1989). State transitions are changes in a discrete variable, such as movement from married to unmarried, from colonial dependency to sovereignty, or from a command to a market economy. Event recurrences are distinct happenings such as the outbreak of civil or international wars. Most event history methods assume that the process operates in continuous time (i.e., that an event can occur at any time). Parallel methods exist for the discrete-time case, where events can only occur at particular points in time (see Allison 1982).

The aim of event history analysis is to describe and model the underlying stochastic process that generates events. This goal is usually translated into a regression-like examination of how explanatory variables accelerate or slow the rate at which the event occurs. These variables may characterize the environment or the case “at risk” and may be measured on a categorical or interval level.

The potential applications of event history analysis are very broad. Contemporary methods have roots in actuarial and medical settings (where “survival” analyses examine human mortality) and in industrial engineering (where “failure time” analyses examine product durability). Event history analysis has more recently found wide application in the social sciences, where most work has studied demographic and institutional shifts occurring to people and organizations: the classical trio of birth, death, and marriage – or merger.