Centre for Multilevel Modelling

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• Research
• Learning and training
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• Publications
  • Multilevel Statistical Models (3rd ed)
  • The Analysis and Interpretation of Multivariate Data for Social Scientists (2nd ed)
  • The Analysis and Interpretation of Multivariate Data for Social Scientists (1st ed)
• Software
• Advanced quantitative methods in social science and health

Working papers

• The probity of free school meals as a proxy measure for disadvantage (PDF, 0.3 mb), Daphne Kounali, Anthony Robinson, Hugh Lauder, Harvey Goldstein
  • This is a research paper based on an ESRC-funded research project in collaboration with the Hampshire Local Authority on the factors that affect pupils' progress in primary schools in England. The work undertaken has a particular interest on the methodology for the measurement of economic disadvantage in education research. More specifically, interest lies on how these methods of measurement can inform education policy - opportunities and limitations in the use of large scale administrative data that drive education policy making.
    • Abstract:The use of free school meal (FSM) data is widely prevalent in official estimates of educational disadvantage as well as in educational research reports in Britain. However, while there has been some concern expressed about the measure, there has, to our knowledge, been no systematic test of its appropriateness. In this paper we test for its appropriateness as a measure, taking into account the dynamics of poverty and the error that can be associated with its application in judging school performance. We find that it is a coarse and unreliable indicator by which school performance is judged and leads to biased estimates of the effect of poverty on pupils academic progress. These findings raise important policy questions about the quality of indicators used in judging school performance.
• Multilevel models for family data (PDF, 0.2 mb), Jon Rasbash, Tom O’Connor, Jenny Jenkins
• The complexity of school and neighbourhood effects and movements of pupils on school differences in models of educational achievement (PDF, 0.5 mb), George Leckie
  • Abstract: Traditional studies of school differences in educational achievement use multilevel modelling techniques to take into account the nesting of pupils within schools. However, educational data are known to have more complex non-hierarchical structures. The potential importance of such structures is apparent when considering the impact of pupil mobility during secondary schooling on educational achievement. Movements of pupils between schools suggest that we should model pupils as belonging to the series of schools attended and not just their final school. Since these school moves are strongly linked to residential moves, it is important to additionally explore whether achievement is also affected by the history of neighbourhoods lived in. Using the national pupil database, this paper combines multiple membership and cross-classified multilevel models to simultaneously explore the relationships between secondary school, primary school, neighbourhood and educational achievement. The results show a negative relationship between pupil mobility and achievement, the strength of which depends greatly on the nature and timing of these moves. Accounting for pupil mobility also reveals that schools and neighbourhoods are more important than shown by previous analysis. A strong primary school effect appears to last long after a child has left that phase of schooling. The additional impact of neighbourhoods, on the other hand, is small. Crucially, the rank order of school effects across all types of pupils is sensitive to whether we account for the complexity of the multilevel data structure.