Quantitative history is a method of

historical research The Institute of Historical Research (IHR) is a British educational organisation providing resources and training for historical researchers. It is part of the School of Advanced Study in the University of London and is located at Senate Hous ...

that uses

quantitative Quantitative may refer to: * Quantitative research, scientific investigation of quantitative properties * Quantitative analysis (disambiguation) * Quantitative verse, a metrical system in poetry * Statistics, also known as quantitative analysis ...

statistical Statistics (from German: ''Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industria ...

and

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...

resources. It is considered a type of the

social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

and has four major journals: ''Historical Methods'' (1967– ), ''

Journal of Interdisciplinary History The ''Journal of Interdisciplinary History'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the MIT Press. It covers a broad range of historical themes and periods, linking history to other academic fields. Contents The journal featur ...

'' (1968– ), the ''Social Science History'' (1976– ), and '' Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution'' (2010– ). Quantitative historians use databases as their main sources of information. Large quantities of economic and demographic data are available in print format which can be converted into computer databases. The largest repository presently is the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) of the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, which provides access to an extensive collection of downloadable political and social data for the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and the world.

Data bases

Content analysis Content analysis is the study of documents and communication artifacts, which might be texts of various formats, pictures, audio or video. Social scientists use content analysis to examine patterns in communication in a replicable and systematic ...

'' is a technique borrowed from journalism research whereby newspapers, magazines or similar sources are coded numerically according to a standardized list of topics.

Economic history

Economic historian Economic history is the academic learning of economies or economic events of the past. Research is conducted using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and the application of economic theory to historical situations and inst ...

s use major data sets, especially those collected by governments since the 1920s. Historians of slavery have used census data, sales receipts and price information to reconstruct the economic history of slavery.

Political history

Quantifiers study topics like voting behavior of groups in elections, the roll call behavior of legislators, public opinion distribution, and the occurrence rate of wars and legislation. ''Collective biography'' uses standardized information for a large group to deduce patterns of thought and behavior.

Social history

Social historians using quantitative methods (sometimes termed "new

social historian Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...

s", as they were "new" during the 1960s) use census data and other data sets to study entire populations. Topics include demographic issues such as population growth rates, rates of birth, death, marriage and disease, occupational and education distributions, genealogy and migrations and population changes. A challenging technique is that of associating occurrences of the name of a given person ("nominal record linkage") whose information appears in multiple sources such as censuses, city directories, employment files and voting registration lists.

Cliodynamics Cliodynamics () is a transdisciplinary area of research that integrates cultural evolution, economic history/cliometrics, macrosociology, the mathematical modeling of historical processes during the ''longue durée'', and the construction and analy ...

is the application of scientific method to the study of history, combining insights from

cultural evolution Cultural evolution is an evolutionary theory of social change. It follows from the definition of culture as "information capable of affecting individuals' behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation a ...

macrosociology Macrosociology is a large-scale approach to sociology, emphasizing the analysis of social systems and populations at the structural level, often at a necessarily high level of theoretical abstraction. Though macrosociology ''does'' concern itself ...

, and

economic history Economic history is the academic learning of economies or economic events of the past. Research is conducted using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and the application of economic theory to historical situations and ins ...

cliometrics Cliometrics (, also ), sometimes called new economic history or econometric history, is the systematic application of economic theory, econometric techniques, and other formal or mathematical methods to the study of history (especially social and e ...

to produce and analyse large quantitative datasets and identify general principles about the evolutionary dynamics and functioning of historical societies.

Topics

During 2007–2008, the five most viewed articles in ''Social Science History'' were:Reports
dukejournals.org # S. J. Kleinberg, "Children's and Mothers' Wage Labor in Three Eastern U.S. Cities, 1880-1920" Mar 01, 2005; 29: 45-76. # Ted L. Gragson, Paul V. Bolstad, "A Local Analysis of Early-Eighteenth-Century Cherokee Settlement," Sep 01, 2007; 31: 435-468. # Helen Boritch, "The Criminal Class Revisited: Recidivism and Punishment in Ontario, 1871-1920," Mar 01, 2005; 29: 137-170. # Javier Silvestre, "Temporary Internal Migrations in Spain, 1860-1930," Dec 01, 2007; 31: 539-574. # Eric W. Sager, "The Transformation of the Canadian Domestic Servant, 1871-1931" Dec 01, 2007; 31: 509-537.

References

Bibliography

* Aydelotte, William O., Allan G. Bogue, and Robert William Fogel, eds. ''The Dimensions of Quantitative Research in History'' (Princeton University Press, 1972). Essays by leading pioneers with case studies in the social, political, and economic development of the United States, France, and Great Britain. * Clubb, Jerome M., Erik W. Austin, and Gordon W. Kirk, Jr. The Process of Historical Inquiry: Everyday Lives of Working Americans (Columbia University Press, 1989). Uses case study of American textile workers in 1888-90 * Clubb, J. M., and E. K. Scheuch (eds.) ''Historical Sozial Research: The Use of Historical and Process-Produced Data,'' Stuttgart 1980, European emphasis * Dollar, Charles, and Richard Jensen. ''Historian's Guide to Statistics,'' (Holt, 1971; Krieger 1973); detailed textbook of quantitative political and social history with bibliography * Fogel, Robert William and G. R. Elton, ''Which Road to the Past: Two Views of History'' (Yale University Press, 1983). Debate over merits. * Haskins, Loren and Kirk Jeffrey. ''Understanding Quantitative History'' (M.I.T. Press, 1990). textbook * Hollingsworth, T.H. ''Historical Demography.'' Hodder & , London 1969 * Hudson, Pat. ''History by Numbers: An Introduction to Quantitative Approaches'' (Arnold, 2000). Comprehensive textbook; examples drawn mainly from British sources. * Jarausch, Konrad H. and Kenneth A. Hardy, ''Quantitative Methods for Historians: A Guide to Research, Data, and Statistics'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1991). textbook * Kousser, J.M., "History QUASSHed: quantitative social scientific history." ''American Behavioral Scientist'' 23(1980), p. 885-904 * Lorwin, Val R. and. J. M. Price, ed. ''The Dimensions of the Past: Materials, Problems and Opportunities for Quantitative Work in History,'' Yale UP 1972 * Kimberly A. Neuendorf. ''The Content Analysis Guidebook'' (2002) * Rowney, D.K., (ed.) ''Quantitative History: Selected Readings in the Quantitative Analysis of Historical Data,'' 1969 * Swierenga, Robert P., ed. ''Quantification in American History: Theory and Research'' (Atheneum, 1970). Early essays on methodology, and examples of political, economic, and social history. * Wrigley, E.A. (ed.) ''Identifying People in the Past.'' Edward Arnold, 1973. Using demographic and census data

Other sources

* Grinin, L. 2007. Periodization of History: A theoretic-mathematical analysis. In
History & Mathematics: Analyzing and Modeling Global Development
Edited by

Leonid Grinin Leonid Efimovich Grinin (russian: Леони́д Ефи́мович Гри́нин; born in 1958) is a Russian philosopher of history, sociologist, political anthropologist, economist, and futurologist. Born in Kamyshin (the Volgograd Region), Gr ...

, Victor C. de Munck, and

Andrey Korotayev Andrey Vitalievich Korotayev (russian: link=yes, Андре́й Вита́льевич Корота́ев; born 17 February 1961) is a Russian anthropologist, economic historian, comparative political scientist, demographer and sociologist, ...

. Moscow: KomKniga, 2006. P.10-38. . * Kimberly A. Neuendorf. (2002). ''The Content Analysis Guidebook''. Los Angeles: Sage. * Moyal, J.E. (1949) The distribution of wars in time. ''

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society The ''Journal of the Royal Statistical Society'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of statistics. It comprises three series and is published by Wiley for the Royal Statistical Society. History The Statistical Society of London was founded ...

'', 112, 446-458. * Richardson, L. F. (1960). ''Statistics of deadly quarrels''. Pacific Grove, CA: Boxwood Press. * Silver, N. C. & Hittner, J. B. (1998). ''Guidebook of statistical software for the social and behavioral sciences.'' Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. * Turchin, P., et al., eds. (2007)
History & Mathematics: Historical Dynamics and Development of Complex Societies.
Moscow: KomKniga. * {{cite journal , last1=Turchin , first1=Peter , title=Fitting Dynamic Regression Models to Seshat Data , journal=Cliodynamics , date=2018 , volume=9 , issue=1 , pages=25–58 , doi=10.21237/C7clio9137696, doi-access=free *Wilkinson, D. (1980). ''Deadly Quarrels: Lewis F. Richardson and the Statistical Study of War.'' Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. * Wright, Q. (1965). ''A Study of War''. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

External links

Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research
(ICPSR) at the

Quantitative History
Fields of history Social science methodology Quantitative research