What statistical analysis should I run when I have only 4 clusters at Level 2 (in multilevel analysis)?-alternative to HLM that fits my data better
Hello,
I have collected data from 250 students enrolled in 4 highschools and I thought I can run a Hierarchical Linear Multilevel analysis with student characteristics at Level 1 and School at level 2. More recently, I have read in several papers that for this type of analysis, it is recommended to have a large number of units at Level 2 (at least 50), which is not my case.
Given this, what type of statistical analysis is recommended?
Thank you
With only 4, most people would advise to use a fixed effect model (ie., create three dummy variables for the school). If you are using R this can be done with factor and not having to write out lots of variables making the code look long.
For a reference see:
McNeish, D. & Stapleton, L.M. (2016). Modeling clustered data with very few clusters. Multivariate Behavioral Research. 51, 495-518.
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