"Event history analysis...has [over time] branched out in two directions: on the one hand, surveys collecting retrospective information on respondent's life course, family and occupational histories, residential mobility...; on the other, individual biographies compiled by extracting information from administrative sources (vital registration data, census schedules, notifications of residence...). Each method has constraints--the second, in particular, because of depending on the availability of administrative data: job changes are never registered and in France, neither are residential moves. That limits observation to the information collected when a census is held or a vital event registered. [The authors] test here the validity of these incomplete data by comparing them to information supplied by an ad hoc survey."