Table of Contents

Chapter 1: What Is Multilevel Modeling and Why Should I Use It?
Mixing levels of analysis
Theoretical reasons for multilevel modeling
What are the advantages of using multilevel models?
Statistical reasons for multilevel modeling
Assumptions of OLS
Software
How this book is organized
Chapter 2: Random Intercept Models: When intercepts vary
A review of single-level regression
Nesting structures in our data
Getting starting with random intercept models
What do our findings mean so far?
Changing the grouping to schools
Adding Level 1 explanatory variables
Adding Level 2 explanatory variables
Group mean centring
Interactions
Model fit
What about R-squared?
R-squared?
A further assumption and a short note on random and fixed effects
Chapter 3: Random Coefficient Models: When intercepts and coefficients vary
Getting started with random coefficient models
Trying a different random coefficient
Shrinkage
Fanning in and fanning out
Examining the variances
A dichotomous variable as a random coefficient
More than one random coefficient
A note on parsimony and fitting a model with multiple random coefficients
A model with one random and one fixed coefficient
Adding Level 2 variables
Residual diagnostics
First steps in model-building
Some tasters of further extensions to our basic models
Where to next?
Chapter 4: Communicating Results to a Wider Audience
Creating journal-formatted tables
The fixed part of the model
The importance of the null model
Centring variables
Stata commands to make table-making easier
What do you talk about?
Models with random coefficients
What about graphs?
Cross-level interactions
Parting words

About the Author

Karen Robson is Assistant Professor in the Department and Marketing and Hospitality at Central Michigan University. She holds a BSc (Honsd) in Psychology from Queen’s University, and an MA in Psychology, an MBA and PhD from Simon Fraser University. Karen’s research investigates consumer innovativeness, including how consumers repurpose or use market offerings in ways not intended by the manufacturer and the intellectual property law implications of this practice. A recipient of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Doctoral Scholarship, her work has appeared in journals such as MIS Quarterly Executive, Business Horizons, Journal of Marketing Education, Journal of Advertising Research, and Journal of Public Affairs.

David Pevalin is Professor in the School of Health and Human Sciences and Dean of Postgraduate Research and Education at the University of Essex. He previously served in the Merchant Navy, the City of London Police and the Royal Hong Kong Police. He studied part time at the University of Hong Kong before graduate studies at the University of Calgary, Canada. He returned to the UK in 1999 as Senior Research Officer at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex and joined his current School in 2003 after obtaining his PhD. He co-authored (with Karen Robson) The Stata Survival Manual (Open University Press), co-edited (with David Rose) The Researcher’s Guide to the National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (Sage), and authored research reports for the Department of Work and Pensions and the Health Development Agency. He has published papers in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, British Journal of Sociology, Lancet, Public Health, and Housing Studies.

Reviews

I started to read the book with vivid interest because of the subject that too often does not find enough space in books which provide an overview of the most used statistical methods  leaving out those who are somewhat a little bit more elaborate. After a while I found that I had read many pages, as a story, in a short time, and, rethinking to the title of the book, I remembered there was a part saying "…. In plain language". This is really genuine.

The Authors do really introduce the subject in a very friendly way, propose examples which facilitate the reader to better  understand and explain the output of Stata.  I suggest the book both to students and instructors who want a specific text on this subject. On the one hand, students will be not afraid of formula, considering that the book is centred on the understanding of the subjects, on the other hand, instructors will benefit in reviewing the path of the multilevel analysis very quickly.

It is a book for those who have some knowledge of statistic but I think that this aspect is definitely clear to the reader. The book is really complete in all the phases of a multilevel analysis, the "plain approach" helps the reader to grasp the idea,  follow the Stata commands and outputs and, finally, to interpret the findings. I think that the Authors were very skillful in preparing this book and added a very useful resource, in particular, for those who use Stata for their analysis.
*Dr. Gabriele Messina*