Abstract
In this book we intend to demonstrate that methodological innovation in the application of quantitative and computational techniques is an important part of the future for a sociology that is a population and policy science able to address some of the big issues facing society. Our book does its work in a particular society – namely, New Zealand – and does so over a defined period of rapid social and economic change leading up to the turn of the millennium. But, just as important, we do our work with the assistance of a uniquely dynamic and representative set of linked data (the longitudinal census), and we do so in a highly innovative and technically accomplished way by building a simulation model that reproduces the principal trajectories of the society and its peoples over this time. This allows us to test hypotheses and create scenarios of wider social and policy interest.
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Davis, P., Lay-Yee, R. (2019). Introduction. In: Simulating Societal Change. Computational Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04786-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04786-3_1
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