What to Do about Missing Values in Time‐Series Cross‐Section Data

James Honaker and Gary King

American Journal of Political Science, 2010, vol. 54, issue 2, 561-581

Abstract: Applications of modern methods for analyzing data with missing values, based primarily on multiple imputation, have in the last half‐decade become common in American politics and political behavior. Scholars in this subset of political science have thus increasingly avoided the biases and inefficiencies caused by ad hoc methods like listwise deletion and best guess imputation. However, researchers in much of comparative politics and international relations, and others with similar data, have been unable to do the same because the best available imputation methods work poorly with the time‐series cross‐section data structures common in these fields. We attempt to rectify this situation with three related developments. First, we build a multiple imputation model that allows smooth time trends, shifts across cross‐sectional units, and correlations over time and space, resulting in far more accurate imputations. Second, we enable analysts to incorporate knowledge from area studies experts via priors on individual missing cell values, rather than on difficult‐to‐interpret model parameters. Third, because these tasks could not be accomplished within existing imputation algorithms, in that they cannot handle as many variables as needed even in the simpler cross‐sectional data for which they were designed, we also develop a new algorithm that substantially expands the range of computationally feasible data types and sizes for which multiple imputation can be used. These developments also make it possible to implement the methods introduced here in freely available open source software that is considerably more reliable than existing algorithms.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (67)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2010.00447.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:amposc:v:54:y:2010:i:2:p:561-581

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Journal of Political Science from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().