Approaches for event history analysis based on complex longitudinal survey data

A researcher using complex longitudinal survey data for event history analysis has to make several choices that affect the analysis results. These choices include the following: whether a design-based or a model-based approach for the analysis is taken, which subset of data to use and, if a design-based approach is chosen, which weights to use. We discuss different choices and illustrate their effects using longitudinal register data linked at person-level with the Finnish subset of the European Community Household Panel data. The use of register data enables us to construct an event history data set without nonresponse and attrition. Design-based estimates from these data are used as benchmarks against design-based and model-based estimates from subsets of data usually available for a survey data analyst. Our illustration suggests that the often recommended way to use panel data for longitudinal analyses, data from total respondents and weights from the last wave analysed may not be the best way to go. Instead, using all available data and weights from the first survey wave appears to be a safe choice for longitudinal analyses based on multipurpose survey data. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013