The Centre for Multilevel Modelling runs a research meeting series each year, open to all with an interest in multilevel modelling and quantitative techniques, questions and applications more generally. The format varies, though typical sessions may include presentations by academics or PhD students, discussions of articles or blogs of interest, and informal workshops to play around with different statistical techniques. We aim to offer a space of support and discussion around quantitative work and are always open to suggestions for sessions. 

2023/2024

• April 2024:
  • Dr Rob Gruijters, Associate Professor in Education, School of Education,  "School Segregation: A Global Perspective"
• March 2024: 
  • Oby Bridget Azubuike, PhD Student, School of Education,  "Open to all, accessible by few: Examining individual, community, and state inequalities in secondary and higher education in Nigeria using multilevel modelling of survey data"
• January 2024: 
  • Dr Daniel Schaefer, Research Associate, School of Education, "The random-intercept cross-lagged panel model in comparison to the traditional cross-lagged panel model"
    
• November 2023:
  • Rhiannon Moore, PhD Student, School of Education, "Teacher effectiveness in the Indian context: A mixed methods study investigating the relationship between teacher motivation, professional knowledge, classroom environment and student learning"
• October 2023:
  • Valentina Perinetti Casoni, Senior Research Associate, School of Education, "Ethnic biases in English state primary schools: exploring the impact of school ethnic composition on teachers' perceptions of students' school effort"
• October 2023:
  • Professor Koen Aesaert, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Belgium, "The impact of measurement error in student prior achievement on predicted school effects in school value-added models"

2022/2023

• July 2023:
  • Professor George Leckie, Professor of Social Statistics, School of Education, University of Bristol, "Two-level models for complex survey data: Survey weights"
• June 2023:
  • Ekaterina Melianova, PhD Student, School of Geographical Sciences, "Local government policies and mental health: Untangling the impacts using a dynamic modelling approach"
• May 2023: 
  • Hope Kent, PhD Student, University of Exeter, "Ethical applications of algorithms in the criminal justice system and the broader social sciences"
    
• March 2023:
  • Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) workshop led by Dr Katherin Barg, Senior Lecturer in Education, School of Education.
• January 2023:
  • Dr David Bartram, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Leicester, “Does inequality enhance life satisfaction? A longitudinal investigation”. You can watch the video of David's talk here.
• November 2022:
  • Dr Gemma Derrick, Associate Professor, School of Education. “The academic motherload: Models of modern parenting and its effect on research productivity and performance”.
• October 2022:
  • Introduction session and short presentation by Dr Lucy Prior, Research Associate in Quantitative Methods in Education, School of Education. “Student mobility: extent, impacts and predictors of a range of movement types”.

2021/2022

• July 2022:
  • Dr Cathryn Knight, Senior Lecturer in Psychology of Education, School of Education. “Using secondary and administrative data to explore the predictors and impacts of Special Educational Needs”.
• April 2022:
  • Jinglu Zhang, PhD student, School of Education. “Assessing Chinese high school students’ scientific argumentation competence (SAC): a SAC learning progression and SAC performance across subgroups”.
• February 2022:
  •  Dr Katherin Barg, Senior Lecturer in Education, School of Education. Presenting on her research including: studying the association between mother’s occupation-specific skills and children’s cognitive development; investigating the intergenerational transmission of parents’ reading to their children and how this relates to social class; and a project looking at social and ethnic biases in teachers’ assessment of the school performance of primary school children in different countries.
• November 2021:
  • Dr Andrew Bell, Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Social Sciences, University of Sheffield. “Using multilevel modelling to understand intersectionality in health: the MAIHDA model with geographical and longitudinal extensions”.
• October 2021:
  • Introductory session and paper discussion of the following blog on international education interventions: https://www.cgdev.org/blog/how-big-are-impacts-international-education-interventions

2020/2021

• June 2021:
  • Virtual ‘Walk and Talk’ event as part of the School of Education Doctoral Conference.
• June 2021:
  •  Paper discussion led by Dr Andreas Soteriades, Data Scientist with Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, on the following paper: Liu and Zuo (2019) “Measuring the impact of interaction between children of a matrilineal and patriarchal culture on gender differences in risk aversion”
• April 2021:
  • Samir Sweida-Metwally, PhD student, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies. “Ethnic inequalities and Muslim penalties in the British Labour Market”
• February 2021:
  • Dr Levi Wolf, Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Human Geography, School of Geographical Sciences. “On space and place in predictive models”.
• December 2020:
  • Paper discussion led by Rhiannon Moore, PhD student, School of Education, on the following paper: D. Harris (1989) “A comparison of 1, 2 and 3 parameter IRT models”.
• November 2020:
  • Introductory session and paper discussion on the following article from ‘significance’ magazine “Polls and the US presidential election: real or fake?”

2019/2020

• February 2020:
  • Rhiannon Moore, PhD student, School of Education. “Teacher effectiveness in the Indian context”
• January 2020:
  • Paper discussion led by Victoria Bowen, Research Assistant, School of Education, on the following paper: Allen and Higham (2018) “Quasi-markets, school diversity and social selection: Analysing the case of free schools in England, five years on”.
• October 2019 – February 2020:
  • Reading seminar series progressing through Hox et al.’s (2017) Introduction to Multilevel Analysis” chapter by chapter.

 

PhD and Early Career Researcher Meet-ups

These meet-ups are a chance for PhD students and ECRs in the Centre for Multilevel Modelling to get together for peer-support, exchanging ideas and socialising. Sessions run as a combination of online and in-person events with students or researchers leading sessions on topics or skills of interest or sharing papers with the group.  

2022/2023

 

• February 2023:
  • Lunch and learn session on using ChatGPT for research held in person and online
• December 2022:
  • Christmas lunch social/peer-support meeting held in person
• November 2022:
  • Lunch and learn session on creating prevalence maps in Excel held in person
  • Brainstorming/peer-support/informal chat session held online

 

Bristol Conversations in Education

The Centre for Multilevel Modelling also occassionally hosts speakers as part of the Bristol Conversations in Education series. These seminars showcase world-class, impactful, cross-disciplinary research about education and so the group's participation in these events helps to foster wider discussion and dialogue in the research and non-academic community around quantitative methods and research. 

• March 2022:
  • Professor Gemma Moss (UCL Institute of Education): 'Rethinking the relationships between education research, policy and practice post COVID: Opportunities and challenges'
• October 2022:
  • Dennis Sherwood (Silver Bullet Machine consultancy): 'The Great Grading Scandal'
• November 2020:
  • Frank Norris (Co-op Advisor on Education and Schools): 'Why the Co-op is involved in the academy programme'
• November 2019:
  • Andreas Soteriades (Data Scientist at Ofsted): 'An interactive pre-inspection tool for Further Education and Skills inspectors'.
• May 2019: 
  • Professor Michele Haynes (Australian Catholic University): 'Establishing dependability of judgement in a graduate teaching performance assessment'
• February 2019:
  • Professor Andy Field (University of Sussex): 'What does trait anxiety and the transition from primary to secondary education mean for maths achievement and maths anxiety?'
• October 2018: 
  • Professor Steve Higgins (Durham University): 'Analysing educational trials: the Education Endowment Foundation Archive'
• March 2018:
  • Professor John MacInnes (University of Edinburgh): 'Who is afraid of statistics? Pedagogy and Stats anxiety'