Causal Theory and Statistical Measures of Effect: A Convergence

Abstract

Many theoretical questions investigated by sociologists hypothesize that one or more independent variables produce certain effects on a dependent variable. For substantive theories with this kind of structure, an explicit translation into mathematical model form is provided by Coleman's work with continuous-time, discrete-space stochastic processes. The statistical technique most appropriate for estimating the parameters of such a model is exactly the same as multiple regression analysis of dummy variables. Aside from the power which multiple regression brings to multivariate analysis, the major advantage of this convergence is the explicit empirical evaluation it provides for the structure of a substantive theory.