Springer Methodology and Epistemology of Multilevel Analysis: Approaches from Different Social Sciences: 2 (Methodos Series, 2)

The purpose of the multilevel approach is to understand individual behaviors taking into account the social context in which they occur. This book deals with concepts and methods underlying this approach. This book is of interest to a broad audience of social scientists, statisticians and philosophers concerned with new issues raised by the multilevel approach, and more generally with explanation in the social sciences. Review From the reviews: "This is a remarkable and unusual volume. It is written by practitioners about practice but their common focus is on the array of methodological difficulties and limitations of practice. These are confronted directly and neither ignored nor finessed. … The contributors to this volume seek to develop an approach to the part-whole or holism-individualism problem. Their approach comprises a variety of syntheses of individual and society at intermediate levels. Among other things, their approach helps avoid extreme, fundamentalist formulations and enables consideration of the influence of individuals on the group and of the group on individuals. Reciprocal relations, cumulative causation, overdetermination―call it what you will, it is a substantively rich and promising approach, rich too in its ability to cope with various methodological assumptions." (Warren Samuels, Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, 2005). "To the accumulating stock of textbooks and journal articles (didactic and empirical studies), Daniel Courgeau has contributed this volume that is a blend of history, philosophy, and statistics. It is hardly surprising that Courgeau would assemble a volume with just this blend, since he has long occupied a singular position in the field, with his enthusiasm both for rather abstract excursions into the epistemology that governs the population sciences and for technical innovations that extend the frontiers of empirical research. Accordingly, the volume has a dual purpose: first, to consider how multilevel models can provide a more complete and balanced portrait of empirical reality than alternative models; and, second, to describe how multilevel analysis is performed, with particular attention to some recent technical innovations. This makes for an unusual and stimulating volume―I am aware of no other collection of papers on multilevel analysis with this distinctive blend― … It seems that there are few scholars with Courgeau’s capacity to handle both kinds of material with intelligence and authority." (John Casterline, Population Studies, 2005). "The book is characterized by a few themes which are repeatedly tackled, such as the opposition between holism and individualism in the social sciences, the pitfalls of the ecological fallacy and the opposed atomistic fallacy, the ability of models to throw light on causal relationships, the role of time in the social sciences and its connections with the hierarchical levels. Though the contributions are very different, due to the diversity of the fields and to the more or less theoretical level chosen by the authors, the book has its own identity thanks to the pages written by Daniel Courgeau, who opens and closes the book and also briefly introduces every chapter with some lines of presentation. …The target audience of the book is potentially wide, ranging from social scientists to philosophers of science. The book is of interest also to trained statisticians who are willing to go beyond the technical aspects of the models in order to fully understand the potentialities and limitations of multilevel analysis with respect to several fields of application. In fact the book gives the reader the chance to compare several different views of the topic, while each of the many textbooks on multilevel models takes a single view." (Leonardo Grilli and Carla Rampichini, European Journal of Population, 2004). "As the title says, the text deals both with methodology and epistemology. It sh