Ecological Inference
Ecological inference is the problem of learning about individual behavior — such as how Black and white voters cast their ballots — when only aggregate data are available, like precinct-level turnout and racial composition. Because individual-level data are missing, the within-group rates are not directly observed; ecological inference recovers them by combining the deterministic accounting constraints that each precinct must satisfy with a statistical model of how the unobserved rates vary across precincts. Gary King's 1997 solution unified the deterministic method of bounds with Leo Goodman's classic ecological regression, sharply reducing the long-standing risk of the ecological fallacy.
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- King, G. (1997). A Solution to the Ecological Inference Problem: Reconstructing Individual Behavior from Aggregate Data. Princeton: Princeton University Press. · ISBN 9780691012414
- Goodman, L. A. (1953). Ecological Regressions and Behavior of Individuals. American Sociological Review, 18(6), 663–664. · DOI 10.2307/2088121
Curated claims
Claims persisted in the evidence ledger, each with its own assessment.
This view does not invent a claim assessment when the ledger has none.
Related methods
Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.