st: Modelling the passage of time: OLS vs survival analysis

[Christer Thrane <lineea@broadpark.no>]

Hi everybody,

Perhaps an easy question, but I can't seem to figure it out...

My dependent variable, gathered from a survey, is the variable "time 
(measured in weeks) from from one started thinking about "X" until one 
reached a decision about X." Also, everybody in the data reached this 
decision. The data structure looks like this, and time ranges between 0 and 
52 weeks (mean = 5.2 weeks):

id       gender        age        time     ...
1        0             30         7        ...
2        0             45         5        ...
3        1             36         0        ...
4        1             27         44       ...

and so on.

Q1: Is it theoretically meaningfull to think of this variable as suiteble 
for survival analysis (SA), or is this "a job" for OLS regression

Q2: Provided that SA is meaningful, how should I set up the data in ths 
instance?

BR,

Christer Thrane 
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