Regression Options for Historians: Choosing Among OLS, Tobit, and Probit Models

Abstract

Only a generation ago, it was almost unheard of for historians to use multivariate regression analyses to substantiate their arguments. And when historians did begin to utilize regression models in the early 1970s, the suitability of such methods for historical research was a matter of considerable debate. But today, although protests occasionally resurface, regression tables can be found in mainstream journals and well-received books, on topics ranging from the impact of the Counter Reformation in France to the dynamics of kinship in colonial New England to the nature of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana.