This paper will address some of the conceptual issues that arise when interpreting the results of the multilevel modelling of comparability between examinations. Some of the comparability studies carried out by the Research and Evaluation Division of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate will be used to illuminate the conceptual issues involved. The differences in interpretat...

Available online 29 March 2009 This longitudinal study examined the development of educational and occupational expectations from adolescence to adulthood in relation to racial/ethnic and socioeconomic status (SES) group membership. Hierarchical linear modeling on national data (NELS:88) spanning 12 years yielded several findings: (a) African American participants reported the highest education...

Separability in ordinary regression is achieved by partitioning the set of explanatory variables into mutually orthogonal subsets. The coefficient vector of each subset is separate: its estimate depends only on the response and on the explanatory variable scores of the subset. The feasibility of formulating multilevel models with subsets of separate parameters in the fixed part is discussed. Ge...

A robust literature indicates that neuroticism has numerous negative implications for romantic relationships. But are there factors that can protect intimates from such implications? Given that negative affect accounts for part of the association between neuroticism and relationship distress, and given that the positive affect associated with sex may negate that negative affect, the authors pre...

A virtual agent may obviously benefit from having an up-to-date model of his environment of activity. The model may include actual users’ profiles, a dynamic environment characteristic or some assumptions being accepted by default. However, the agent doesn’t have to stick to one model only, he can possess a set of complementary beliefs, both learned and assumed. A hierarchy of beliefs for an e-...

Studies designed to answer these questions have employed different sources of data, different variables, and different analytic techniques. Both the results of those studies and the methods used to conduct them have been subject to considerable academic debate. In general, there has been widespread agreement on the first question. Most researchers have concluded that schools indeed influence st...

Steele et al. (2005) describe a general framework for the analysis of correlated event histories, with an application to a study of partnership transitions and fertility among a cohort of British women. A multilevel multistate competing risks model is used to examine the relationship between prior fertility outcomes (the presence and characteristics of children and current pregnancy) and the di...

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