Social sequence analysis

Social sequence analysis is a special application of sequence analysis, a set of methods that were originally designed in bioinformatics to analyze DNA, RNA, and peptide sequences. Social sequence analysis involves the examination of ordered social processes, ranging from microsocial interaction patterns (for example, turn-taking dynamics in conversations) and interpersonal contact dynamics to the development of social hierarchies and macrosocial temporal patterns. The analysis of such patterns can involve descriptive accounts of sequence patterns, statistical event history analysis, optimal matching analysis, narrative or event structure analysis, and dynamic social network sequencing. After being introduced to the social sciences in the 1980s and a period of slow growth during the 1990s, social sequence methods have become increasingly prevalent.

Sequence analysis methods were first imported into the social sciences from the biological sciences by the University of Chicago sociologist Andrew Abbott in the 1980s, and they have since developed in ways that are unique to the social sciences. Scholars in psychology, economics, anthropology, demography, communication, political science, and especially sociology have been using sequence methods ever since.

Psychologists have used those methods to study how the order of information affects learning, and to identify structure in interactions between individuals. In sociology, sequence techniques are most commonly employed in studies of patterns of life-course development, cycles, and life histories. There has been a great deal of work on the sequential development of careers, and there is increasing interest in how career trajectories intertwine with life-course sequences. Many scholars have used sequence techniques to model how work and family activities are linked in household divisions of labor and the problem of schedule synchronization within families. The study of interaction patterns is increasingly centered on sequential concepts, such as turn-taking, the predominance of reciprocal utterances, and the strategic solicitation of preferred types of responses. Social network analysts have begun to turn to sequence methods and concepts to understand how social contacts and activities are enacted in real time, and to model and depict how whole networks evolve. Social network epidemiologists have begun to examine social contact sequencing to better understand the spread of disease.

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