Dr George Leckie

Lecturer in Social Statistics

Research Interests

My research interests are in developing and applying quantitative research methods to address educational and other social science research questions which are characterised by complex multilevel structured data. I have a particular interest in the development and application of multilevel models, latent variable models and growth mixture models.

My substantive research interests includes: highlighting statistical limitations of the English Government's school league tables; assessing the quality of marking of England’s national curriculum key stage educational tests; and modelling social and ethnic segregation among London schools and neighbourhoods.

My statistical software interests are in developing runmlwin, a Stata command to fit multilevel models in MLwiN from within Stata.

Biography

I joined the Centre for Multilevel Modelling in 2005, initially working on the ESRC-funded LEMMA 1 research project (2005-2008). I was a co-investigator on the ESRC-funded LEMMA 2 (2008-2011) and e-Stat (2009-2012) research projects and am currently a co-investigator on the ESRC-funded LEMMA 3 research project (2011-2014). I hold an ESRC future research leaders grant (2013-2015).

Previously, I have held research positions at the Centre for Market and Public Organisation in the Department of Economics, University of Bristol and was a visiting researcher at Cornell University, Institute of Education, University of York, and VU University Amsterdam.

My research (with Professor Harvey Goldstein), on the limitations of using school league tables to inform school choice, received considerable attention in the press; including: BBC Radio 4, Financial Times, The Telegraph and The Times Educational Supplement.

I lead three units on the advanced quantitative methods pathway of the ESRC South West Doctoral Training Centre (SWDTC). I often teach short courses on multilevel modelling to academic and other researchers: Belfast, Bristol, Brussels, Cincinnati, Dublin (Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland), Essex, London (Royal Statistical Society), Paris (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), Tuebingen, and Zurich. I author an extensive set of multilevel modelling training materials for the LEMMA multilevel modelling online course. I second supervise two PhD students. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

I have worked on a range pf government and other funded consultancy projects: University of Oxford (Ofqual and Pearson), University of Birmingham (DoH), National Assessment Agency, Higher Education Academy, and King’s College London (MRC).

I sit on the Royal Statistical Society's Professional Development Centre and Social Statistics Section committees.

Current Research Projects

Future Research Leaders
LEMMA 3

Past Research Projects

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

Leckie, G. and Charlton, C. (2013). runmlwin - A Program to Run the MLwiN Multilevel Modelling Software from within Stata. Journal of Statistical Software, 52 (11),1-40.
Zammit, S., Gunnell, D., Lewis, G., Leckie, G., Dalman, C. and Allebeck, P. (2013). Individual and area level influence on suicide risk: a multilevel longitudinal study of Swedish school children. Psychological Medicine. Forthcoming.
Jenkins, J., Rasbash, J., Leckie, G., Gass, K. and Dunn, J. (2012). The role of maternal factors in sibling relationship quality: a multilevel study of multiple dyads per family. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, 53, 622-629.
Leckie, G., Pillinger, R., Jones, K. and Goldstein, H. (2012). Multilevel modelling of social segregation. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 37, 3-30.
Cheung, C., Goodman, D., Leckie, G. and Jenkins, J. (2011). Understanding Contextual Effects on Externalizing Behaviors in Children in Out-of- home Care: Influence of Workers and Foster Families. Children and Youth Services Review, 33, 2050-2060.
Leckie, G. and Baird, J.-A. (2011). Rater effects on essay scoring: A multilevel analysis of severity drift, central tendency and rater experience. Journal of Educational Measurement, 48, 399-418.
Leckie, G. and Goldstein, H. (2011). A note on “The limitations of using school league tables to inform school choice”. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, 174, 833-836.
Leckie, G. and Goldstein, H. (2011). Understanding uncertainty in school league tables. Fiscal Studies, 32, 207-224.
Rasbash, J., Leckie, G., Pillinger, R. and Jenkins, J. (2010). Children's educational progress: partitioning family, school and area effects, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, 173, Part 4, 1-26.
Leckie, G. (2009). The complexity of school and neighbourhood effects and movements of pupils on school differences in models of educational achievement, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, 172, 537-554.
Leckie, G. and Goldstein, H. (2009). The limitations of using school league tables to inform school choice, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, 172, 835-851.
Propper, C., Burgess, S., Bolster, A., Leckie, G., Jones, K. and Johnston, R. (2007). The Impact of Neighbourhood on the Income and Mental Health of British Social Renters, Urban Studies, 44, 393-415.
Propper, C., Damiani, M., Leckie, G. and Dixon, J. (2007). Impact of patients’ socioeconomic status on the distance travelled for hospital admission in the English National Health Service, Journal of Health Service Research & Policy, 12, 153-159.

Other Publications (selected)

Leckie, G. (2012) Cross-classified hierarchical linear modeling, in Michalos, A. C (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of Quality of Life Research, Springer Reference. Forthcoming.
Leckie, G. (2012) Cross-classified multilevel models using Stata: How important are schools and neighbourhoods for students’ educational attainment? In Garson, D. (Ed.) Hierarchical Linear Modeling: Guide and Applications. Sage.
Leckie, G. (2012) Multiple membership models, in Michalos, A. C (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of Quality of Life Research, Springer Reference. Forthcoming.
Propper, C. and Leckie, G. (2011) Increasing Competition Between Providers in Health Care Markets: The Economic Evidence. In Smith, P. and Glied, S. (Eds.) Oxford Handbook of Health Economics. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Leckie, G., Pillinger, R., Jenkins, J. and Rasbash, J. (2010) School, family, neighbourhood: which is most important to a child's education? Significance, 67-72.
Goldstein, H. and Leckie, G. (2008) School League Tables: What can they really tell us? Significance, 5, 67-69.