It is common for social scientists to use formal quantitative methods to compare ecological units such as towns, schools, or nations. In many cases, the size of these units in terms of the number of individuals subsumed in each differs substantially. When the variables in question are counts, there is generally some attempt to neutralize differences in size by turning variables into ratios or by controlling for size. But methods that are appropriate in many demographic and epidemiological contexts have been used in settings where they may not be justified and may well introduce spurious relations between variables. We suggest local regressions as a simple diagnostic and generalized additive models as a superior modeling strategy, with double-residualized regressions as a backup for certain cases.

社会科学家通常使用正式的定量方法来比较生态单位，例如城镇，学校或国家。在许多情况下，就每个单元中包含的个体数量而言，这些单元的大小存在很大差异。当所涉及的变量是计数时，通常会尝试通过将变量转换为比率或通过控制大小来抵消大小差异。但是，在可能没有正当理由并可能在变量之间引入虚假关系的环境中，已使用了适合许多人口统计学和流行病学背景的方法。我们建议将局部回归作为一种简单的诊断方法，将广义加性模型作为一种较好的建模策略，并建议将双残差回归作为某些情况的备份。