Chinese Journal of Sociology ›› 2009, Vol. 29 ›› Issue (5): 187-205.

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Spatial Point Pattern Analysis and Social Investigation

 SHI Pei-Jian   

  • Online:2009-09-20 Published:2009-09-20

Abstract:

The factor of space has long been neglected in sociological research. There are many reasons for that. One possible reason is lack of suitable methods of studying social problems from a spatial analysis viewpoint. Fortunately, the methods of spatial point pattern analysis are gradually getting mature in the environmental epidemiology with the excellent work of many statisticians. We contend that employing these methods to study social problems is exceedingly valuable because a lot of sociological objects have the spatial characteristic on a large scale. This paper is to introduce the sociologists to some of the classical methods in spatial point pattern analysis.

Key words:

the Chinese Imperial Examination System, officialdom, social mobility, traditional society’s way of integration, center of society

,  K function, kernel method, risk surface, spatial clustering, spatial variation