Multilevel Modeling Techniques

As researchers who examine phenomena within and around organizations, industrial and organizational psychologists must deal with nested data. Consider that individuals are nested within job categories, job categories are nested within work groups, work groups are nested within departments, departments are nested within organizations, and organizations are nested within nations and industries. Furthermore, people do not enter these jobs and organizations in random ways; rather, people choose which organizational environments to enter, and organizations choose which people to select and retain. All of this leads to the important observation that much of the data obtained in organizational settings are unlikely to be independent within units. This, in turn, carries a statistical consequence: that some key assumptions of our tried-and-true statistical methods (regression and analysis of ...