ITS DEJA-VU ALL OVER AGAIN - USING MULTIPLE-SPELL DISCRETE-TIME SURVIVAL ANALYSIS

Multiple-spell discrete-time survival analysis can be used to investig ate the repeated occurrence of a single event, or the sequential occur rence of disparate events, including: students' and teachers' entries into, and exists from, school; childrens' progress through stages of c ognitive reasoning; disturbed adolescents' repeated suicide attempts; and so forth. In this article, we introduce and illustrate the method using longitudinal data on exit from, and reentry into, the teaching p rofession. The advantages of the approach include: (a) applicability t o many educational problems; (b) easy inclusion of time-invariant and time-varying predictors; (c) minimal assumptions-no proportional-hazar ds assumption is invoked and so the effects of predictors can vary ove r time within, and across, spells; and (d) all statistical models can be fit with a standard logistic regression package.