Professor Harvey Goldstein

Professor of Social Statistics

• FBA
• Email: h.goldstein@bristol.ac.uk
• publications list: 1963 - present (PDF, 426kB)
• Publications 1963-present (downloadable)
• Brief CV (PDF, 133kB)
• Follow me on Twitter

Professor Goldstein is a chartered statistician, is currently joint editor of the Royal Statistical Society's Journal, Series A, has been a member of the Society's Council and was awarded the Society's Guy medal on silver in 1998. He was elected a member of the International Statistical Institute in 1987, and a fellow of the British Academy in 1996. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Open University in 2001.

Research interests

There are four main foci of my research interests.

1. The first is the use of statistical modelling techniques in the construction and analysis of educational tests. The implications of adopting such models have been explored in a series of papers since 1977. In a number of papers he has also explored the ideas of criterion referenced assessment, comparability of assessments and the interaction of assessment modes and the purposes of assessment.
2. The second interest lies in the area of 'educational (school) effectiveness'. He has been involved in a number of longitudinal studies of 'value added indicators' for comparing institutions and the use of such indicators for school improvement purposes.
3. The third research interest is in the methodology of multilevel modelling. He has had research funding for this since 1986 and has supervised the production (with Bill Browne and the late Jon Rasbash) of a widely used software package (MLwiN) and made a number of theoretical developments. The major text on multilevel modelling is his book 'Multilevel Statistical Models': (2011) 4th Edition, Wiley, Chichester.
4. Finally, in recent years, largely in collaboration with Bill Browne, James Carpenter and Mike kenward I have been dveloping metods for handling missing data values and measurement errors using Bayesian modelling and latent normal transformations.

News

• I have started a new BLOG commenting on current educational issues. This is at HGeduc.blogspot.com. If you follow me on Twitter (@GoldsteinHarvey) then you will be told when a new commentary is posted.
• The Department for Education has, for 2012, 2013 and 2014 produced more extensive information in the annual school league tables. Unfortunately, despite concerns being raised with them, there are some serious problems with these which can easily lead to misinterpretations. Click here (PDF, 407kB) for a note on this.
• A report produced for the British Academy provides a comprehensive discussion of league tables in the public sector.
• .Recent work with George Leckie has demonstrated how the uncertainty associated with using school league tables for choosing schools, can be illustrated graphically in ways that make it very accessible to users. Click here (PDF, 201kB). In this connection, some recent work by Allen and Burgess appears to provide evidence that league tables can make useful predictions, but on close examination this evidence turns out to be weak and based upon a questionable analysis. Click here for a critique (PDF, 283kB).
• A 2010 paper in the British Educational research journal seeks to resurrect the Rasch (item response) model for educational testing, using rather dubious arguments. A detailed response to this, which the journal has refused to publish without even going through a refereeing process, can be viewed here (PDF, 414kB). It is, however now due to be published in early 2015.
• New research on the uses of school league tables (PDF, 161kB) shows that for purposes of school choice they convey very little useful information.
• One development of the REALCOM project has been to develop a full multilevel multiple imputation procedure that will handle normal as well as categorical data. This procedure has been implemented using an interface between REALCOM and MLwiN. The software and a manual can be downloaded. The methodology is described in a paper on mixed multivariate responses (PDF, 342kB) that has been published in Statistical Modelling.  The latest version will now write out chains for parameters selected for monitoring. This may be useful for studying functions of parameters. See the new manual for details.
• Multilevel Statistical Models Third Edition (2003) - latest updates and datasets. An updated and expanded fourth edition, published by Wiley, was published at the end of 2010.

Contents

• LGROW is freely available software for calculating longitudinal child growth norms.
• Commentaries on current issues in education 1996-2005. - Using understandings based upon research, these commentaries are responses to official documents and pronouncements about educational policy.
• My published papers 1963-2014
  • My published papers 1963-2010 (PDF, 268kB)
• Brief curriculum vitae. - Basic personal details, professional activities, awards and research projects.

Multilevel Statistical Models- Second Edition (1995)

• Free complete electronic version of the 1995 edition of the book (PDF, 648kB)

Multilevel Statistical Models - Third Edition (2003)

• latest updates and datasets. An updated and expanded fourth edition, published by Wiley, was published at the end of 2010.

Some useful web sites

• Education-line electronic database - This is a database for the grey literature in educational research. It has been set up by the British Educational Research Association to make available speedily unpublished papers, read at conferences or work in progress, including critical evaluations of current issues. Serious researchers are invited to contribute. To access it (as part of a database devoted to a wider effort to disseminate social research findings).
• Department for Education (formerly known as the Department for children, schools and families).
• Department for Business Innovation and Skills (formerly known as Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills).
• Office for Standards in Education - OFSTED.
• Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency.