Encyclopedia of SociologyVol._3

And, of course, the dissertations written by doctoral students are typically acquired and cataloged by their institution’s libraries, and sold through Bell and Howell Information and Learning in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The published literature in sociology can also be seen as part of a broader professional communication system which includes less formal interchanges like presentation of papers at regional and national conferences (Osburn 1984). Developments in information technology have fostered the growth of such ‘‘invisible colleges’’—especially in sociology, where computers have long been important tools. Sociologists have, for many years, made use of data analysis packages the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and now quite commonly have their own personal computers with word processing software and connections to the Internet. As a result, formerly disparate activities like data analysis, writing, and publishing have begun to merge (Anderson 1998). E-mail listserv discussion groups, and the ease with which writings can be posted to the World Wide Web have fostered efficient communication among sociologists sharing research interests, and seem to hold considerable promise for the discipline (Bainbridge 1995). Libraries participate in and help foster these developments in a variety of ways. For example, many libraries participate in the JSTOR program, subscribe to full text services, and provide their users with on-line access to journal indexes like Sociological Abstracts and the

Social Sciences Citation Index. Many also support the development of exclusively electronic journals by directing users to them through their on-line catalogs and Web pages.

GENERAL STRATEGIES FOR LITERATURE

SEARCHING IN SOCIOLOGY

It is difficult to provide good general strategies for location information in sociology for a variety of reasons. As noted, any number of topics and approaches may be pursued, and a large number of journals and other sources may contain important articles or other information. In addition, a doctoral student ‘‘terrorized by the literature’’ in anticipation of preliminary exam questions (Becker 1986) will need to use different research strategies than will an undergraduate student writing the

typical library term paper. Rapid changes in information technology make it even harder to suggest tactics that will be valid five years from now. It is also useful to remember that, although librarians tend to view literature searching as something of a structured and rationalized activity, it can and should often take place in a more open, informal, serendipitous, or even mysterious way—especially in the early stages of a research project. Nevertheless, being alert to the following issues and suggestions can help make literature searching more effective and more efficient. Users are urged to consult their local library staff for additional advice and guidance, and for current information on local resources.

1.Overview or summarizing tools. Although sociologists tend not to use or rely on review serials like the Annual Review of Sociology, these can often prove helpful by summarizing and evaluating the main themes of recent research and setting them in a broader context. A similar function is played by subject encyclopedias like this one, by disciplinary handbooks (such as Smelser 1988; Smelser and Swedberg 1994; Gilbert et al. 1998), and to some extent by sociology textbooks. Some summarizing sources like these

can be found in general and specialized reference books and guides (Aby

1997; Balay 1996; Wertheimer 1986; Zabel 1996). In addition, searches of electronic databases can sometimes be limited to ‘‘review articles.’’

2.Differences in indexing terminology. Periodical indexes and library catalogs quite often use a defined list of subject terms, which may vary from those commonly used in an area of literature, by a community of scholars, or by an individual student trying to describe a topic. Successful use of these tools often requires matching an idea to indexing terminology. This can save time by helping to eliminate irrelevant citations.

3.Techniques for searching electronic resources. The scholarly communication system in all disciplines seems destined to be tied increasingly to developments in information technology, and researchers will need to understand how to interact with and

use electronic tools effectively. Although most users now know that rough ‘‘keyword’’ searching can give them relevant citations, it is also important to know how to use ‘‘Boolean operators,’’ such as AND, OR, and NOT to combine and manipulate terms (Sociology Writing Group 1998) and to incorporate subject indexing terms into a search strategy.

4.Evaluation of sources. The gatekeeping role played by peer reviewers of journal articles helps guarantee that an article has passed a test of quality or adherence to accepted research norms. This is less apt to be the case with other information sources— especially those found on Web pages or via Web search engines. It is consequently useful to develop a generally skeptical outlook on information sources, and to evaluate such sources on the basis of such things as credibility of origin, scope and coverage, currency, and reputation (Sociology Writing Group 1998).

5.Library collections as a linked system. Since it seems unlikely that the financial constraints facing academic libraries will

ease in the foreseeable future, libraries will continue their efforts to share resources efficiently. As a result, library users should assume that the collections available to them extend far beyond what their local libraries own. Graduate students and faculty, especially, will need to be aware of how their libraries are making these broad-

er resources available and how long it will take to obtain publications from elsewhere.

LOCATING PERIODICAL LITERATURE

The most important tools for locating relevant periodical articles are known by librarians as abstracting and indexing services, because they abstract (or summarize) articles and index them (apply subject terms to them) according to a vocabulary developed for the purpose. These tools are frequently available in both printed and electronic form, and the electronic versions offer powerful searching capabilities and other features such as links to the full text of articles. The most important for researchers in sociology are the Social

Sciences Index (and some competing products),

Sociological Abstracts, and Social Sciences Citation Index.

The Social Sciences Index and several competing products are important because they provide students with relatively easy access to a more manageable subset of the available literature than do the other two main tools. Because even smaller academic libraries will tend to subscribe to the majority of periodicals indexed in them, they are especially helpful for beginning students. For many years the printed Social Sciences Index was the primary general tool for social science researchers. It has gradually grown in coverage and now indexes roughly four hundred important social science journals, including about fifty titles in sociology, and is available in a few different electronic versions with abstracts and the full text of some of the indexed articles. Articles are carefully indexed according to subject, with ‘‘see’’ and ‘‘see also’’ references pointing users to other relevant subjects.

Within the last several years a few companies like EBSCO, the Gale Group, and Bell and Howell have offered some other, more general periodical indexes aimed at the college or undergraduate library market which cover largely the same range of social science literature. Although the sociology journals indexed are fairly similar, these products do differ in their indexing and abstracting practices, how far back their indexing and full text coverage extends, which titles are provided in full text, and in their search capabilities and limitations.

In contrast to these general sources, Sociological Abstracts covers the sociological literature much more comprehensively. Since this source is so fundamental to literature searching in sociology, it is worth quoting the publisher’s description at length:

Sociological Abstracts provides access to the world’s literature in sociology and related disciplines, both theoretical and applied.

The database includes abstracts of journal articles selected from over 2,500 journals, abstracts of conference papers presented at various sociological association meetings, relevant dissertation listings from Dissertation Abstracts International, enhanced bibliographic citations of book reviews, and abstracts of selected sociology books published in Sociological Abstracts (SA) and Social

Planning/Policy and Development Abstracts

(SOPODA) since 1974.

Approximately 2,500 journals in thirty different languages from about fifty-five countries are scanned for inclusion, covering sociological topics in fields such as anthropology, economics, education, medicine, community development, philosophy, demography, political science, and social psychology. Journals published by sociological associations, groups, faculties, and institutes, and periodicals containing the term ‘‘sociology’’ in their titles, are abstracted fully, irrespective of language or country of publication. Noncore journals are screened for articles by sociologists and/or articles

of immediate interest or relevance to sociologists.

The abstracts provided are typically lengthy and detailed, and articles are indexed by author and a sufficient number of indexing terms from the Thesaurus of Sociological Index Terms to describe their content. The Thesaurus has been developed over time with sociological concepts and terminology in mind, and this tool—which may be integrated into an electronic version of the publi- cation—is a key to making searching more efficient and effective. As shown by the following sample entry for the term ‘‘Satisfaction,’’ the Thesaurus indicates what subject terms are available for searching, and what relationships they have with one another.

Satisfaction DC D740400

SN A context-dependent term for an individual’s positive assessment of self or circumstances. Select a more specific entry or coordinate with oth-

er terms.

HN Formerly (1963–1985) DC 403350 UF Fulfillment (1969–1985)

BT Attitudes

NT Community Satisfaction Job Satisfaction

Life Satisfaction Marital Satisfaction

RT Discontent Emotions Happiness Improvement

Needs

Quality

Self Esteem

The most important codes shown in this example are as follows. SN stands for a ‘‘scope note,’’ or definition of the term. BT indicates that the ‘‘broader term’’ of ‘‘Attitudes’’ can be used. NT stands for ‘‘narrower’’ or more specific terms, and RT for ‘‘related terms.’’ UF means that ‘‘Satisfaction’’ is ‘‘used for’’ Fulfillment (in other words, fulfillment is not used as a subject term). (For a complete discussion of the codes and their meaning and use, consult the Thesaurus.)

Users of both the printed and electronic versions of Sociological Abstracts would be able to find abstract entries using these terms. The printed index refers users to an abstract number, which is then looked up in another part of the volume to actually locate the abstract, whereas the electronic version would provide a set of abstracts that could be reviewed and printed out. The following example was found on line by searching for ‘‘Life Satisfaction’’ as a subject term using a version of Sociological Abstracts produced by Silver Platter Information in Norwood, Massachusetts.

race & financial status, regardless of marital status. 3 Tables, 44 References. Adapted from the source document

DEM: *Marital-Status (D491150); *Well-Be- ing (D916500); *Sex-Differences (D758100); *Single-Persons (D771900); *Life-Satisfaction (D463800)

DES: United-States-of-America (D890700) SH: social psychology; personality & social

roles (individual traits, social identity, adjustment, conformism, & deviance) (0312)

The ‘‘DEM’’ label in this entry stands for ‘‘major descriptors’’, and indicates that the main topics of this article are Marital Status, Well-Being, Sex-Differences, Single-Persons, and Life-Satisfac- tion. The ‘‘DES’’ label stands for ‘‘minor descriptors,’’ and shows that although the article has been indexed under ‘‘United-States-of-America,’’ this is not an important focus.

As noted earlier, a key technique in using this and other electronic indexes is combining terms using Boolean operators to make searching more precise and to limit the amount of material that must be reviewed. In this case, this article and other entries could have been found by searching for the subject terms ‘‘Life Satisfaction’’ AND ‘‘Sex Differences.’’ A slightly more complex search strategy or statement might have been to search for ‘‘Life Satisfaction OR Well-Being’’ AND ‘‘Marital Status OR Single Persons.’’ This kind of search statement can be made as elaborate as necessary to the situation. It is also possible to limit search results by date, language, journal, and type of publication (such as book review, journal article, or conference paper), and to search on virtually any combination of words found in the article title and abstract entry. It is, of course, impossible or impractical to do so with the printed publication. Because of its comprehensiveness, many users of Sociological Abstracts will need to adjust their search strategies to exclude conference papers and dissertations (which are often difficult to obtain) and foreign language publications.

The Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) does not cover journals in sociology quite as extensively as Sociological Abstracts, but it covers journals in other social science disciplines more completely than the latter, and much more comprehensively

than does the Social Sciences Index. In 1997, for example, the SSCI indexed 1,725 journals ‘‘completely,’’ including 92 titles in sociology, and indexed another 1,371 on a selective basis. During that year, 72,665 articles and another 39,412 book reviews in all social science disciplines were indexed. Unlike Sociological Abstracts, abstracts have only recently begun to be provided in SSCI (in the electronic versions only), and articles are not indexed according to a fixed indexing vocabulary. Instead, heavy reliance is made in the print version on words from the titles of articles. Articles are also indexed by author, of course, although the publisher uses only authors’ first and middle initials, rather than their full names, which can occasionally cause confusion.

What is uniquely valuable about this source is that it enables users to search ‘‘by citation,’’ or to locate articles that have cited an earlier author or article. Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information, which publishes SSCI, described the idea behind citation indexes as follows:

The concept of citation indexing is simple. Almost all the papers, notes, reviews, corrections, and correspondence published in scientific journals contain citations. These cite— generally by title, author, and where and when published—documents that support, provide precedent for, illustrate or elaborate on what the author has to say. Citations are the formal, explicit linkages between papers that have particular points in common. A citation index is built around these linkages. It lists publications that have been cited and identifies the sources of the citations. Anyone conducting a literature search can find from one to dozens of additional papers on a subject just by knowing one that has been cited. And every paper that is found provides a list of new citations

with which to continue the search. (Garfield 1979, p. 1)

Books as well as journal articles in sociology can be, and often are, cited by the journal articles indexed in SSCI (Sullivan 1994) and the ability to search on cited references may provide a large number of additional ‘‘access points’’ for locating an article. The article on marital status that was used as the sample record from Sociological Abstracts, for example, cited forty-four earlier articles

and studies. Users of SSCI could search on any of those citations and locate the article that way.

One difficulty with performing citation searches lies in knowing when it will be useful do so. In sociology, although it is possible to perform citation searches on the handful of authors in the recognized pantheon (i.e., Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and some others), such an approach will often result in far too many references with only tenuous subject relationships to one another. It may consequently be necessary to combine a result set from a citation search with some other group of search terms. Where citation searching seems most useful in sociology is when tracing a methodological article, or in other somewhat narrow circumstances. To do a citation search for a journal article—using either the printed SSCI or its electronic counterpart—requires that a researcher know the author’s name and initials, and preferably the volume, volume number, year, and page of the publication. For example. Clifford Clogg and Gerhard Arminger’s 1993 article titled ‘‘On Strategy for Methodological Analysis’’ from the publication Sociological Methodology (vol. 23, pp. 57–74) is listed in SSCI as:

CLOGG CC SOCIOL

METHODOL 23 57 1993

By searching the printed or electronic versions of SSCI under this entry, it would be possible to find other articles which cited this article. It would also be possible to look at the list of sources cited by Clogg and Arminger and find other articles which have cited them. As with Sociological Abstracts, the electronic version of SSCI makes for far more efficient searching—especially of citations. Another interesting use to which citation searching is often put is comparing faculty members’ research productivity—especially for promotion and tenure consideration. This procedure is controversial for a variety of reasons—especially when comparing faculty members from different disciplines, which may not share the same publication and citation patterns.

Depending on the particular topic being researched, and the depth with which the search must be carried out, a number of other tools in neighboring or related fields may prove useful, including Anthropological Literature, EconLit, Popline, Psychological Abstracts/PsycInfo, and Social Work Abstracts. In addition, researchers may be able to avail

themselves of journal article ‘‘alerting’’ services, such as Uncover Reveal, which automatically sends the tables of contents of specified journals and article citations containing specified keywords to users via e-mail. Although some of the electronic versions of the indexes discussed also provide linkages to a local library’s journal holdings information or to on-line full text, accurately determining which articles are available locally still typically requires a separate step.

LOCATING BOOKS, JOURNALS, AND OTHER RESOURCES IN LIBRARIES

As noted earlier, most libraries now provide online versions of their catalogs. Unlike card catalogs, on-line catalogs can be searched via keyword, and with Boolean operators or combinations. They may also provide direct links to electronic resources on the World Wide Web, as well as the circulation status of a book. In addition, many now permit users to view lists of the books they have checked out and to reserve items checked out to other users. Despite these and other less visible changes, books are catalogued in much the same way they have been for years: by author, title, and subject. Few college students will be unaware that books can be searched by author and title, but they may also mistakenly assume that a journal article can be found by its author or title in a library catalog. Instead, the title of the journal must be searched, and then the specific volume and page located on the shelf within that journal.

Although many students will also realize that books can be located by subject, few will understand how the subject heading system works. The system used for this in most academic libraries was developed at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the headings themselves are called Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). These headings are published in multivolume sets by the same name, which now closely resemble database thesauri like the Thesaurus of Sociological Index Terms. They can be used in the same way to find relevant subject headings for searching. For example, the entry for ‘‘Satisfaction’’ in the 1997 edition of LCSH looks like this:

Satisfaction

BT Self

RT Self-realization

NT Consumer satisfaction

Contentment Housing—Resident satisfaction Job satisfaction Libraries—User satisfaction

Office buildings—Tenant satisfaction Patient satisfaction

Public housing—Resident satisfaction Rental housing—Resident satisfaction

—Religious aspects

—— Buddhism, [Christianity, etc.]

Like the entry from the Thesaurus, this shows the availability of Broader (BT), Related (RT), and Narrower (NT) terms. Unlike terms from the Thesaurus, though, LCSH lists a large number of terms that are subdivisions of more general terms. In other words, if a researcher were to look under ‘‘Libraries’’ as a subject term, she or he might find books listed under many subdivisions, including ‘‘User satisfaction.’’ This is also true of subject headings that are more directly related to sociology. For example, the term ‘‘Sociology’’ can be subdivided by a country or other geographic term, or by such terms as ‘‘—Methodology’’, ‘‘—Philoso- phy,’’ or ‘‘—Statistical methods.’’ Subject headings can also be modified by adding a comma and an adjective to a term. For instance, ‘‘Sociology, Islamic’’ would be used instead of ‘‘Islamic Sociology.’’ Although it is not necessary to thoroughly understand this system, it is useful to realize that it exists, and that some help from library staff in identifying useful subject headings may be needed. As with other databases, noticing what subject headings have been applied to relevant, known books may be a good start, and may lead to the finding of other important books.

Most academic libraries now also physically organize their book and journal collections using another system developed at the Library of Congress: its call number scheme. Unlike the Dewey Decimal system that is commonly used in school and public libraries, Library of Congress call numbers start with one or two letters. For example, sociology and economics have both been assigned the letter H, to which a second letter is added for a further breakdown. For sociology, the primary classes are:

SOCIOLOGY

Numbers make these breakdowns more specific. For example, before extensive changes were introduced recently, the numbers between HM 1 and HM 299 were used for topics in sociology. Under the revised scheme, HM numbers 401 and higher will be used instead, which will allow a finer topical breakdown and arrangement. For example, under the old scheme the numbers from HM 251 to HM 299 were assigned to various topics in Social Psychology, such as:

A particular book in general social psychology would have been assigned the subject call number HM 251, to which additional combinations of letters, numbers and possibly dates designating the author or work would be applied. For example, the 1998 edition of the Handbook of Social Psychology was assigned the number HM 251 H224 1998, where H224 represents the title, and 1998 the edition. Under the revised system, books in social psychology will receive numbers HM 1000 and above, and the same Handbook cataloged under it might have the call number HM 1033 H34 1998. This will obviously and unfortunately cause books on similar topics but classed under the older and newer systems to be separated on library shelves. Again, it is not necessary to fully understand the call number system, but having a general sense of how it works can make locating books a little easier.

Many researchers will also need to develop an understanding of the kinds of materials that may be available in a given library but not listed in its catalog. The single largest category of such material, in most cases, consists of government publications or documents—especially those things published by the U.S. federal government, but also by state and local governments, the governments of other countries, and the United Nations or other international agencies. Because there are so many

of these publications and documents, very few libraries can provide thorough and complete coverage of them. As a result, other indexes and similar sources are often necessary. For the federal government publications of the United States, the primary tool is the Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications, although there are a number of other supplementary sources available. For example, the American Statistics Index provides very detailed indexing coverage of federal statistical publications. Both of these tools were originally published in paper, but are now available both in electronic versions. Access to publications of U.S. state governments and those of other countries are also unlikely to be catalogued, and other tools may be needed.

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TIMOTHY D. JEWELL

LIFE COURSE, THE

INTRODUCTION

The study of lives represents an enduring interest of sociology and the social sciences, reflecting important societal changes and their human consequences. Most notably, developments after World War II called for new ways of thinking about

people, society, and their connection. In the United States, pioneering longitudinal studies of children born in the 1920s became studies of adults as the children grew up, thereby raising questions about the course they followed to the adult years and beyond. The changing age composition of society assigned greater significance to problems of aging and their relation to people’s lives. Insights regarding old age directed inquiry to earlier phases of life and to the process by which life patterns are shaped by a changing society.

This essay presents the life course as a theoretical orientation for the study of individual lives, human development, and aging. In concept, the life course refers to a pattern of age-graded events and social roles that is embedded in social structures and subject to historical change. These structures vary from family relations and friendships at the micro level to age-graded work organizations and government policies at the macro level. Lifecourse theory defines a common domain of inquiry with a framework that guides research in terms of problem identification and formulation, variable selection and rationales, and strategies of design and analysis. Beginning in the 1960s, this theoretical orientation has diffused across substantive domains and disciplinary boundaries in the social and behavioral science.

It has uniquely forged a conceptual bridge between developmental processes, the life course, and ongoing changes in society, one based on the premise that age places people in the social structure and in particular birth cohorts. To understand this conceptual bridge, it is useful to distinguish among three levels of the life course and their interplay over a person’s life: (1) institutionalized pathways in society, as established by state policies, education, the workplace, and so on; (2) the individual life course that is formed by the individual’s choices and constraints, frequently in terms of a career or trajectory; and (3) the developmental or aging trajectory of the individual, defined, for example, by intellectual functioning or selfconfidence.

Each of these levels are illustrated by Spilerman (1977) in terms of work. He used the concept of ‘‘career line’’ to refer to pathways that are defined by the aggregated work histories of individuals. Career lines are patterned by industry structures and the labor market. A person’s work life is one

part of the individual life course, and it varies by the career requirements of firm and marketplace. At the psychological level, changes in work life have consequences for personal feelings of efficacy (Bandura 1997).

In this essay, I first take up concepts that have been used interchangeably—the life course, life cycle, life history, and life span. Then I turn to the emergence of life-course theory since the 1960s and its paradigmatic principles.

CLARIFICATION OF CONCEPTS

A number of concepts have been applied interchangeably to lives (life course, life cycle, life history, and life span), but each makes a distinctive contribution that deserves notice in mapping this domain (Elder 1998). The concept of life course is defined by trajectories that extend across the life span, such as family or work; and by short-term changes or transitions, such as entering and leaving school, acquiring a full-time job, and the first marriage. Each life-course transition is embedded in a trajectory that gives it specific form and meaning. Thus, work transitions are core elements of a work-life trajectory; and births are key markers along a parental trajectory. Multiple marriages and divorces are elements of a marital trajectory.

Multiple roles of this kind become interlocking trajectories over time. These linked trajectories may define the life course of a parent and her child. Goode (1960) argues that an individual’s set of relationships at any point in time is both ‘‘unique and overdemanding,’’ requiring strategies that minimize demands by rescheduling transitions (such as entry into work, the birth of a second child), where possible. The synchronization of role demands may entail a spreading out of commitments or obligations, as in the transition to adulthood or in the family formation years. Among dual-earner couples, the timing of retirement has become a synchronization issue in working out an appropriate action for each partner and their relationship (O’Rand et al. 1991). The synchronization of lives is central to life-course planning in families.

Major transitions in the life course typically involve multiple life changes, from entry into the diverse roles of adulthood (Modell 1989) to laterlife changes in work, residence, and family (Hareven 1978; Kohli 1986). These transitions may also

entail a sequence of phases or choice points. The transition to unwed motherhood thus involves premarital sexual experience followed by decisions not to have an abortion, not to give the child up for adoption, and not to marry the father. Causal influences vary across choice points. Early transitions can have developmental consequences by affecting subsequent transitions, even after many years and decades have passed. They do so through behavioral consequences that set in motion cumulative disadvantages or advantages, with radiating implications for other aspects of life (Furstenberg et al. 1987). For example, early teenage childbearing may curtail education and work-life prospects.

The social meanings of age give structure to the life course through age norms, sanctions, and age-graded relationships. In theory, a normative concept of social time specifies an appropriate time or age for marriage, childbearing, and retirement (Neugarten and Datan 1973). This concept also provides a guideline on the meaning of career advancement, whether accelerated or lagging relative to one’s age. Empirical findings are beginning to cumulate on event timing, sequences, and durations, although the knowledge base is thin on causal mechanisms (Shanahan in press). Beyond these social distinctions, age has historical significance for the life course as it locates people in historical context according to birth cohorts.

Family connections invariably place the life course in a broader matrix of kinship relationships, one that extends beyond the boundaries of the immediate family to in-laws, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins (Rossi and Rossi 1990). Within the life course of each generation, unexpected and involuntary events occur through life changes in related generations. Thus, a thirty-year old woman becomes a grandmother when her adolescent daughter has a first baby. People lose their status as grandchildren when their grandparents pass away, and their roles as sons or daughters when their parents die. They become the oldest generation in the family. Ties to family members are part of the normative regulation of life-course decisions.

The life-cycle concept is frequently used to describe a sequence of life events from birth to death, though its more precise meaning refers to an intergenerational sequence of parenthood stages over the life course, from the birth of the

children to their own departure from home and childbearing (O’Rand and Krecker 1990). This sequence, it should be noted, refers to a reproductive process in human populations. Within a life cycle of generational succession, newborns are socialized to maturity, give birth to the next generation, grow old, and die. The cycle is repeated from one generation to the next, though only within the framework of a population. Some people do not have children and consequently are not part of an intergenerational life cycle.

The life cycle is commonly known in terms of a family cycle, a set of ordered stages of parenthood defined primarily by variations in family composition and size (Hill 1970). Major transition points include marriage, birth of the first and the last child, the children’s transitions in school, departure of the eldest and the youngest child from the home, and marital dissolution through death of one spouse. The stages are not defined in terms of age, as a rule, and typically follow a preferred script of a marriage that bears children and survives to old age, an increasingly rare specimen in view of the divorce rate. The life-cycle concept tells us about the sequence of family events, but it does not indicate how closely spaced the events are or when the sequence began in a woman’s life, whether in adolescence or in the late thirties. A rapid sequence of births produces a different family process from that of widely dispersed births. The life stage of the mother also has relevance to the meaning of a birth sequence. Moreover, some woman do not bear children.

Life history commonly refers to a lifetime chronology of events and activities that typically and variably combines data records on education, work life, family, and residence. A life history may also include information on physical health, social identity change, and emotional well-being. These records may be generated by obtaining information from archival materials or from interviews with a respondent. Some interviews are prospective and focus on the present; others are retrospective and enable the investigator to obtain information that was not collected in the past (Giele and Elder 1998). The accuracy of these reports of the past depends on the type of information requested. Subjective states in the past cannot be recovered accurately in retrospective reports. They are interpreted in terms of the present.

A retrospective life history or calendar is based on an age-event matrix (Freedman et al. 1988; Caspi et al. 1996). It records the age (year and month) at which transitions occur in each activity domain, and thus depicts an unfolding life course in ways uniquely suited to event-history analyses (Mayer and Tuma 1990) and to the assessment of time-varying causal influences. The advantages and disadvantages of retrospective life histories and prospective reports are discussed by Scott and Alwin (1998). In developing societies especially, retrospective life calendars are typically the only sources of information on prior life experience.

The term ‘‘life history’’ also refers to a selfreported narration of life, as in Thomas and Znaniecki’s famous life history of Wladek, a Polish peasant, in The Polish Peasant in Europe and America

(1918–1920). Narrative accounts are frequently recorded on tape and then transcribed. Another common approach assigns the interviewer a more active editorial role in actually putting together a life history. In American Lives (1993), Clausen interviewed six adults in their later years and prepared life histories, which the respondents later reviewed for accuracy. He has written about this method in two essays (1995, 1998) that discuss the difference between life stories and life histories.

This qualitative approach to life histories is increasingly considered one part of a multimethod approach to the study of lives. In their pathbreaking longitudinal study of juvenile delinquents, Laub and Sampson (1998) show how the qualitative life histories provide critical insight, when combined with quantitative data, on events that turned men’s lives around toward productive work and good citizenship. Events that are turning points change the direction of lives, they are often ‘‘course corrections.’’ Examples include marriage, military service, and higher education.

Life span specifies the temporal scope of inquiry and specialization, as in life-span psychology or sociology. A life-span study extends across a substantial period of life and generally links behavior in two or more life stages. Instead of limiting research to social and developmental processes within a specific life stage, such as adolescence or the middle years, a life-span design favors studies of antecedents and consequences. Sociologists tend to focus on the social life course, in which ‘‘life stage’’ refers to either socially defined positions,