The centre's core aims are to:

• Develop statistical methods to better represent the complexity of educational and social processes.
• Develop software tools to implement new methods.
• Illustrate the application of new methods to address research questions in education, demography, psychology and public health.
• Provide training in advanced quantitative research methods.

The centre has diverse research interests in education and across the social and health sciences. Areas of current interest include:

• Evaluation of government school performance measures of educational attainment and progress.
• School value-added models.
• The relative importance of family, school and neighbourhood on children’s educational progress, separating 'nature' and 'nurture' effects of the family.
• The relationships between changes in individuals’ physical and mental functioning over time and changes in their socio-economic circumstances.

The centre also has a long-standing interest in developing methods and software to aid researchers in analysing partially observed datasets; please see our missing data page for further details.

Current research grants

• Understanding intersectionality: developing intersectional quantitative methods, with applications to health inequalities and social mobility
• The role of sample characteristics in the stability of value-added estimates of school effects: sample size, student mobility and sample heterogeneity
• The 2020 GCSE and A-level 'exam grades fiasco': A secondary data analysis of students' grades and Ofqual's algorithm
• The Bias In Primary Education Project

Recently completed research grants

• The use of interactive electronic-books in the teaching and application of modern quantitative methods in the social science
• Using Statistical E-books to teach undergraduate students quantitative methods and statistical software
• How should we measure school performance and hold schools accountable?
• Borrowing Strength – a collaborative software development for Small Area Estimation
• Multilevel analyses of individual heterogeneity: innovative concepts and methodological approaches in public health and social epidemiology
• Modelling within-individual variation in repeated continuous exposures
• The link between adolescent mental health and educational outcomes: Exploring the potential of machine learning methods in two national contexts
• Mental health and educational achievement in UK adolescents
• The changing landscape: diversive friendships and the effects of contextual diversity on youth outcomes
• Efficient and transparent methods for linking and analysing longitudinal population studies and administrative data
• The Development of Inequalities in Child Educational Achievement: A Six Country Study project

Past research grants

See also previous projects including LEMMA 3, LEMMA 2, LEMMA 1, Realcom, Family and Multilevel multiprocess models for partnership and childbearing event histories