The course introduces the concepts of multilevel analysis, whose main aim is to model the relationships between and within groups. Typical situations include individuals clustered into families, schools, firms, geographical areas. The first module of the course focuses on the two-level linear model as a template to illustrate issues of specification, estimation and inference. The second module is devoted to multilevel models for categorical responses, i.e. binary, ordinal and polytomous. In both modules, the main ideas are illustrated through several case studies. In order to give an idea of the research questions that can be addressed by means of multilevel analysis, some of the considered case studies are briefly described in the following. A typical field of application is education, where students are clustered into schools: one of the case studies aims at assessing the role of student and school factors on student achievement. Another field of application is public health, as illustrated by two case studies concerning the use of contraceptives in the regions of Brazil and the relationship between smoking behaviour of pregnant women and birth weight of their newborns. A common use of multilevel models is in the analysis of cross-country data such as the European Social Survey: one of the case studies concerns political trust in Europe, considering individual and country-specific characteristics.

Course leader
Leonardo Grilli, Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of FlorenceCarla Rampichini, full Professor of Statistics at the University of Florence

Target group
Students, researchers, business professionals who need to develop good quality surveys and/or need to apply appropriate and up-to-date statistical methods.

Fee info
EUR 150: Student rate EUR 300: Academic rate (teachers & researchers)

Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Address: Department of Political and Social Sciences, Carrer Ramon Trias Fargas, 25-27 Campus Ciutadella
Postal code: 08005
City: Barcelona
Country: Spain
Website: http://www.upf.edu/survey/Summer/
E-mail: recsm@upf.edu
Phone: +3493 542 20 00