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CAUSAL ANALYSIS CAUSAL ANALYSIS David R. Heise A WILEY-INTERSCIENCE PUBLICATION JOHN WILEY & SONS, New York • London • Sydney • Toronto Citation information: Heise, David R. (2001). Causal Analysis. [Electronic Edition. Original publication: 1975, New York: Wiley.] Bloomington, IN: Author. Retrieved {your date} from the World Wide Web: http//www.indiana.edu/~socpsy/public_files/CausalAnalysis.zip Wiley returned copyright to D. Heise when this book went out of print, and Heise grants permission to individuals to reproduce this book electronically or on paper. Copyright © 1975 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. Published simultaneously in Canada. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language without the written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Heise, David R. Causal analysis. “A Wiley-Interscience publication.” Includes bibliographies and index. 1. Social sciences—Statistical methods. 2. Social sciences—Mathematical models. 3. Econometrics. I. Title. HA29.H46 300'.01’51953 75-20465 ISBN 0-471-36898-9 Printed in the United States of America —————— BOOK PAGE SIZE: 5.8” X 8.9" To my Students PREFACE This book focuses on the study of linear systems and represents an effort to organize a broad range of information about this topic in a fairly elementary fashion. Writing in the 1970s, I have had the privilege of drawing key ideas from the work of philosophers, engineers, and methodologists in the life sciences. Some innovations are added here, but the central intention is not so much to break new ground as to cultivate that which already is tilled and so instill a wider awareness and appreciation for this field and its products. The book is addressed to a fairly wide audience of practicing social scientists, students, and interested laymen. Rather than compromise ideas in order to reach this wide audience, I have relied heavily on the pedagogical device of causal diagrams. These diagrams allow one to visualize and comprehend even some of the more intricate topics in social science methodology, and following rules for manipulating diagrams allows almost anyone to carry out many mathematical analyses with the precision of an algebraist. The pedagogical advantage offered by causal diagrams may suggest that they are a “rough and ready” approach to systems analysis. This is not the case. Causal diagrams with their set of rules in themselves constitute a form of mathematics. Such diagrams are employed daily by practicing scientists and engineers. The teacher examining this book may wonder where it fits in a traditional curriculum. Statistics are discussed in detail, but the emphasis here is on statistical description of social systems rather than on the usual statistical inference from samples to populations. Substantive topics are analyzed in examples and in exercises, but the specific examples of models range over most of the field of sociology and comprehend a number of theoretical perspectives. Nevertheless, as a text on model building this volume can be employed in methodology and statistics courses that focus on the use of data for testing and elaborating theories and it can serve as an auxiliary source in courses on theory construction. vii viii Preface Over the last decade numerous colleagues and students have helped to prepare me to write this book. Four were especially important teachers: Edgar Borgatta, George Bohrnstedt, Arthur Goldberger, and Dennis Willigan. James A. Davis, Duncan MacRae, Jr., and Ronald Burt provided valuable criticisms of early drafts of some chapters. So also did many anonymous student readers, including one wag (since identified as Donna Cowan) who suggested titling the book, “Studies in Arrow-Dynamics.” Gert Rippy typed the original manuscript for use in courses at Chapel Hill. In a more personal direction I have enjoyed rich support from Elsa Lewis and Stephen Heise, whose vitality and wit repeatedly reentered me from regions of abstraction while I was writing this book. DAVID R. HEISE Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill May 1975 PREFACE TO THE ELECTRONIC EDITION In the 1970s and 1980s Causal Analysis was adopted frequently as a text in quantitative sociology courses—even in the Soviet Union, where a Russian translation became available in 1982. Notwithstanding this activity, Wiley let the book go out of print in the 1980s, and returned the copyright to me. Professors who had used Causal Analysis in their graduate courses urged me to get the book re-issued by another publisher. However, the timing seemed inauspicious with positivism under attack, the discipline increasingly focused on qualitative research and post-modernism, and publishers reluctant to invest in advanced texts. Technological developments now have opened a way to make the book available again to those who want to use it. One technological basis is the World Wide Web which supersedes traditional publishing as an economical means of distributing educational resources. A second basis is computer software for generating electronic documents that can be perused on a computer or printed with traditional paper and ink. The third technological development consists of scanners and optical-character-recognition programs for digitizing printed texts and reproducing page layouts of any complexity. I have scanned Causal Analysis, reconstituted it as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file, and placed the book on the Web for downloading. Any individual is welcome to download and print the electronic edition of Causal Analysis. University instructors may reproduce multiple copies for students in their classes. I am making Causal Analysis available to educators and students again because I believe the book still has educational value. Causal Analysis discusses issues that arise in constructing quantitative theories about sociological systems. The issues often involve statistics because social systems generate statistical phenomena, and statistical phenomena can be used to infer the nature of a social system. However, the focus of Causal Analysis is on theory rather than on statistics. Thus Causal Analysis is as pedagogically relevant today as it was 25 years ago, despite development during the intervening viii-α