Empirical analysis of variation in demographic events within the population is facilitated by using longitudinal survey data because of the richness of covariate measures in such data, but there is wave-on-wave dropout. When attrition is related to the event, it precludes consistent estimation of the impacts of covariates on the event and on event…

The real problems of contextual analysis concern the conceptualization of contextual effects, the kinds of data with which to estimate them, and the selection and implementation of appropriate statistical techniques. This paper focuses on detection; specifically, an approach to contextual analysis based on the estimation and interpretation of a…