Compare methods

	Sequence Analysis	Social Mobility Table
Field	Sociology	Sociology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1980s–2000 (sociological consolidation)	1927 (concept); 1970s–1980s (modern analysis)
Originator	Andrew Abbott (introduced to sociology)	Pitirim Sorokin; refined by Hauser, Hout, Featherman
Type	Holistic analysis of categorical state sequences over time	Cross-classification of social origins by destinations
Seminal source	Abbott, A., & Tsay, A. (2000). Sequence analysis and optimal matching methods in sociology: review and prospect. Sociological Methods & Research, 29(1), 3–33.	Hauser, R. M. (1978). A structural model of the mobility table. Social Forces, 56(3), 919–953.
Aliases	social sequence analysis, life-course sequence analysis, categorical sequence analysis, trajectory analysis	mobility table, intergenerational mobility table, origin-destination table, transition table analysis
Related	5	5
Summary	Sequence analysis is a holistic method for studying ordered categorical trajectories — such as month-by-month employment states, family life-course events, or daily activity patterns — by treating each individual's whole sequence as a unit, measuring how dissimilar pairs of sequences are, and grouping them into a typology of characteristic pathways. Introduced to sociology by Andrew Abbott, it shifts attention from isolated transitions to the shape of entire life courses.	A social mobility table is a cross-classification of individuals by their social origin (typically a parent's class or occupation) and their own destination class, forming the empirical foundation of intergenerational mobility research. Analyzing it separates how much people move between classes, distinguishes movement forced by changing class sizes from genuine exchange, and isolates the underlying origin–destination association that measures the openness of a society.