I had access to the facilities and resources of the Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis and Collection, the UK Data Archive, the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social Change in Britain and the Albert Sloman Library, so I could gain knowledge and experience in a very broad way. The course covered multilevel modelling, its use, its history and its implementation in the software package MLn. Multilevel models are concerned with analysing hierarchical data structures, Hierarchical structures are very common in the social sciences, they occur almost everywhere.
Multilevel models are able to combine the different levels in one analysis.
The individual and ecological or contextual level are modelled simultaneously, so the complex reality in which the responses and attitudes are built up, can be reflected more precisely. During the two weeks of the course, I learned to recognise multilevel structures, specify a model with complex variation, distinguish the different sources of variation according to the levels, modelling categorical predictors and binomial responses, fitting and interpreting models. There were also a lot of practical exercises, i.e. working on own research using MLn. The course focused on both theoretical background and practical applications, so that the participants would be able to understand and to compute their own multilevel-models afterwards. Attending the course give me the possibility to learn a very specific technique of sophisticated data analysis which cannot he offered in such an intensive way by conventional university training programme.