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The Neighborhood History Calendar: A Data Collection Method Designed for Dynamic Multilevel Modeling
* Pennsylvania State University
William G. Axinn *, Jennifer S. Barber, † and Dirgha J. Ghimire ‡
This paper presents a new data collection method, called the neighborhood
history calendar, designed to collect event histories of community-level
changes over time. We discuss the need for and the uses of this method.
We describe issues related to the design of instruments, collection of
data, and data entry. We provide detailed examples from an application of
this method to the study of marriage, contraception, and fertility in
rural Nepal. The paper addresses applications of this same technique to
other settings and research problems. We also extend the technique to
collection of other forms of contextual-history data, including school
histories and health service histories. Finally, we discuss how
Geographic Information System (GIS) technology can be used to link
together multiple sources of contextual-history data.
† Pennsylvania State University
‡ Tribhuvan University, Nepal
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