Path Analysis: Sociological Examples

Abstract

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A mathematical analysis of the evolution of human mate choice traits: Implications for evolutionary psychologists

“…This is a statistical analysis method that has been developed by Sewall Wright, one of the founders of the field of population genetics (DUNCAN 1966;KENNY 1979;MUELLER 1996;WRIGHT 1934WRIGHT , 1960. It relies on the development of path models, which are diagrams that facilitate the visualization of the relationships between variables measuring phenotypic traits, any intermediate variables, and fitness (RICE 2004).…”

“…A fundamental property of path models is that the covariance between any pair of variables equals the sum of the products of the path coefficients in all possible paths connecting the two variables (DUNCAN 1966;MUELLER 1996;WRIGHT 1934WRIGHT , 1960. Combining this property with Equation (4) for the trait x leads to the requirement for evolution of that trait expressed in Equation (5).…”

“…Equations (9) and (10), derived from path model properties (DUNCAN 1966;WRIGHT 1934WRIGHT , 1960, show how p ws and p wm can be calculated from r ws , r wm and r ms ; these are the Pearson correlation coefficients between w and s, w and m and m and s, respectively: …”

Why Not Find Out Whether Religious Beliefs Predict Surgical Outcomes? If They Do, Why Not Find Out Why? Reply to Freedland (2004).

“…Path analysis, the statistical approach from which mediational analysis is derived, was originated by Sewell Wright (1921), a biologist, was later introduced to social sciences by O. D. Duncan (1966), a sociologist, and today is used across a spectrum of disciplines ranging from economics to behavioral genetics. The standard citation for statistical mediation analysis in psychology is Baron and Kenny (1986), an article published almost two decades ago in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; in social and health psychology the practice is neither innovative nor controversial.…”

The subsistence to commercial transition in agricultural development

“…This (Boudon, 1965;Duncan, 1966;Blau and Duncan, 1967;and Land, I968), which is an application of the original work of Sewall Wright (1921;1934) in genetics.…”