Applied Multilevel Modeling

This course covers the theory and application of multilevel statistical models. Research data in the social sciences are often grouped in ways that impact our statistical analyses (e.g., in marital studies, spouses are more similar to one another than other study participants) and lead to interesting and substantive hypotheses (e.g., how do qualities of the relationship interact with an individual’s personality?). We will focus on why these types of data are problematic for classical statistics and the advantages of multilevel approaches. The seminar will heavily emphasize the practical application of multilevel models and rely on examples to demonstrate their need and application. We will cover the general aspects of multilevel models as well as their extension to longitudinal and multivariate data.

Note that the R code below is a modified version of the R code posted at UCLA’s ATS website for Singer and Willett’s Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis book:http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/R/examples/alda/