ABSTRACT
In the context of this book, the opening quote calls for a grounding in a substantive area such as epidemiology, demography, or one of the social sciences and statistical methods appropriate to the problem. More explicitly, in this context it calls for substantive knowledge about the potential effects of age, period, and cohort on a substantive variable within a field and the appropriate statistical methods for dealing with age, period, and cohort relationships. I will not provide a substantive grounding in any one of these fields or even provide a comprehensive review of the literature on age, period, and cohort models within one of these fields. My objective is different.
