[R] multilevel models and sample size

[Berton Gunter]

"All models are wrong, but some are useful."  --George Box 

I do not understand what you mean by "acceptable, nor "levels" nor "units".
Specifying your model would help clarify things, I think. If by "levels" you
mean number of different values of a random factor, than 2 levels is
unlikely to tell you much useful about the variability of that factor. On
the other hand, 50 values might be. Depends on the model,the data, and the
scientific objectives, none of which you have stated clearly enough for me
to understand, anyway.

-- Bert

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
[mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of ronggui
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2005 9:34 AM
To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: [R] multilevel models and sample size

It is not a pure  R question,but I hope some one can give me advices.

I want to use analysis my data with the multilevel model.The data has 2
levels---- the second level has 52 units and each second level unit has
19-23 units.I think the sample size is quite small,but just now I can't make
the sample size much bigger.So I want to ask if I use the multilevel model
to analysis the data set,will it be acceptable?  or  unacceptable because of
the small sample size?

Thank you very much!

ronggui 

2005-11-28

------
Deparment of Sociology
Fudan University

My new mail addres is ronggui.huang at gmail.com
Blog:http://sociology.yculblog.com