Analyses per research goal

This is the landing page for topics related to analyses for different types of goals that may be the focus of your ILD study.

Your study may focus on different research goals. Although many statistical models can serve each of these goals, they often require specific additional analyses tailored to the focus.

Below we have specified multiple articles where you can read more about different types of goals.

Think more about types of goals

Description

Describing patterns in your data without aiming to generalize to a population.

Prediction

Trying to predict a future observation or characteristic with observations from the present and past.

  • [Forecasting]
  • [Early-warning signals]
Causation

Explaining the mechanisms behind a process.

  • [Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs)]
  • [Dynamic structural equation models]
  • [Marginal structural models]
  • [G-methods]
Analyses that are population-focused, process-focused, or both

Your goal may be to make inferences about the population, a process, or both


Sophie W. Berkhout

Last modified: 2025-05-09