This course is an introduction to survival analysis, also known as 'event history analysis'. These are the statistical methods used to analyse data on spell lengths of time in a state, e.g. how long a marriage lasts, or the duration of a spell of unemployment. For simplicity, the course focuses on models for a single spell per observation unit, but the course also indicates how analysis is extended to address the issues arising when there are multiple spells per unit or multiple destinations ('competing risks').

The course comprises lectures and hands-on applications of the methods using the software Stata.

The aim of the course is to communicate skills necessary to understand and assess the applications of survival analysis reported in the literature; and to provide skills which could be applied to analyse a variety of research and policy problems e.g. in dissertation research.

Stephen P. Jenkins is Professor of Economic and Social Policy at the LSE since January 2011. Before that he was Professor of Economics at ISER, University of Essex. He has taught survival analysis to masters and summer school students for many years. Stephen uses survival analysis in his research and has written a number of widely-used specialist survival analysis modules for use in Stata. His survival analysis pages can be found on the ISER website.