Multilevel Modeling in Plain Language

This is one of the clearest and most useful advanced statistics books I have read in over 50 years of interest. Recommend for all non-experts (and perhaps even some experts) in this these methods and also recommend you run the examples in programs Stata (especially) or R as you read (using other programs like SAS or SPSS is doable and helped by links recommended in the book).I am 90+% through the book in 10 days and feel like I understand and can begin to apply almost all of the content. Am now ready and eager to tackle more advanced texts like "Multilevel and Longitudinal Modeling Using Stata, Volumes I and II, Third Edition", by Sophia Rabe-Hesketh and Anders Skrondal .Starting as an engineer with only a rough acquaintance with multilevel regression and no practical modeling experience; thanks to the book, I now see many ways to apply multilevel regression either to greatly improve or to justify single-level models I had developed and audited.

The book is exactly as the title conveys. It takes you step by step through all the stages of multilevel modeling without overwhelming you with equations. Every Stata command and every component of multilevel equations are described and explained in detail. If you sat in a multilevel course and felt that it was too much for you despite your decent statistics background, buy this book to change your mind. Multilevel modeling isnt too hard, you just need to study it in the way the authors present it in this book. Cant recommend this enough for beginners. The authors are also responsive to emails.

I was neck deep in my dissertation with my deadline looming and was facing so many issues with analysis I was seriously on the verge of a mental breakdown. ... and then this amazing book arrived in the mail. To say it was a life saver is not an exaggeration. it's so clearly written but still goes far enough into multilevel modeling that it more that adequately explained many of the high level analytical challenges I was facing. if I ever meet these authors... beers on me! thank you so much, I'm forever grateful!

The book does just what it advertises - it uses plain language to explain the basics of multilevel models. The biggest feature of the book is not so much the subject, but the way they explain the basics so that other, maybe more advanced texts and guides, are accessible to non-experts. This isn't the end-all be-all of multilevel modeling, but is a great primer for anyone who is trying to learn.

A must read for doctoral students who, at any time in their research, might encounter data that are "nested" (e.g. students in classrooms, individuals in groups, or employees in companies). The authors' writing is easy to follow and clearly written. The examples in the book provide readers with an easy to follow application of the concepts discussed by the authors. This book is not meant to be a technical exposition on the subject, but an easy to read and apply guide for those who are interested in using multilevel modeling in their research.

I bought the Kindle version which I found difficult to read and follow. I should have bought the hard copy. Overall, the text is fairly accessible.

Excellent content and achieves the goal of making MLM accessible to non PhD biostaticians

An excellent reference especially for Stata users.

I bought this because of all the good amazon reviews, claiming that this book explains multilevel models so well. Apparently it's the pinnacle in science education. So what matters that I am a R user - the statistical science is independent of software, isn't it?Now that I am mostly through the book I can say, that it is just boring to me. I can see how this is a good assistance for someone trying to find their ways through Stata but I find no good explanation of hierarchical models, little statistical substance. Some random models are computed and superficially investigated and there are many hints, how complicated things can get.Who is the intended audience? "All schools to the left of zero on the horizontal axis (vertical line) are schools with lower average reading scores than the overall sample average" -- just in case you forgot how "left", "horizontal" and "vertical" are used in a scatterplot. Got it? In case you did not get it, the next sentence will explain "And all schools to the right of zero are those with higher reading scores than the overall sample..."So -- total beginners? Absolutely not!On one hand, we read deep truths like "Remember that the difference between an observed score and the predicted score produce a residual". Ok. On the other hand, terms like "fixed-effect" and "random-effect" are taken for granted and not explained (you will not find fixed effects in the index). Terms like homoscedastic are not explained without formulas. They are not explained at all. Who amongst those who are familiar with random effects, homoscedacicity and exogeneity need to be reminded, what a residual is or how the intercept is sometimes easier to interpret with centered variables?Whilst I do not think that this book explains much about statistics, writing style is a matter of personal taste. To me, this writing is boring - YMMV.There is quite fair R code to accompany the book online at sagepub.com but whilst I can see myself refering back to that in some future, it does not compensate for the rest of the book's deficiencies. No code for SPSS, Python, Julia, etc., just in case you wonder.A positive thing to be said is, that the book has a lot of references in case you are interested in statistics. If I had no idea about shrinkage, I would not understand the very short explanation in the book, but shure enough, the authors never fail to hint you to better reading. That increased my number of stars by at least one.Buy this book if you have some understanding of Stata and if you have some understanding of the basics of hierarchical models on cross-sectional (not longitudinal) data but have difficulties deciding when to do what in Stata to transfer your knowledge into practice. It will help you find the correct commands and it will help you read the results in baby steps and for that it is reasonably priced.

Very helpful to be introduced to MLM. You can then move on to more specialized manuals, such as Hox.