Event history modelling techniques have become increasingly widespread in the social sciences over the last few decades and the range of applications includes demographic and sociological analyses, labour market studies, mobility and migration studies, as well as analyses within political science. In principle, event history analysis represents an extension of the statistical techniques connected with the life table method and can be defined as an analysis of the duration of the non-occurrence of a given event during a risk period. This article devotes attention to the concept of event history analysis in terms of data considerations, basic principles and methods of analysis. In order to discuss the basic methods and their potential to interpret results, the author applied the event-history approach to an analysis of the process of leaving the parental home using data from the Czech Generations and Gender Survey [2005]. The final part of this study discusses some key issues involved in using the event history approach when analysing socio-demographic topics within the Czech context.