Cultural event analysis assists traditional social science methodologies--ethnographies and survey instruments--in the study of urban life. Testing a hypothesis--that educational problems arise and persist for Puerto Rican youth because of contrast, contrariety, and noncomplementarity between the cultural forms and patterns of their home life and school life in urban Chicago--requires interculturally comparable data. Applying cultural event analysis to test the hypothesis produces such data. By viewing a sample of 30 seventh grade, culturally mixed students as 30 "ego networks" with linkages to individual teachers, household adults, and peers, a context for the analysis is established. Analysis of events occuring within linkages between the students and the other members of their networks invites comparison of those events. Defining and characterizing "event" in the abstract is accomplished first, in order to accurately assess a real event. A sample event observation form indicates how the defining of "event" translates into collection of data in the field. By casting data in the form of comparable events, cultural differences can be isolated and tested. This is done, for example, in a question on students' interpretations of "joking relationships." Event analysis applied in this study is a useful conceptualizing tool. (JH)