The Multiple Flavours of Multilevel Issues for Networks

Abstract

Multilevel analysis and social network analysis both represent social structure, and have led to statistical methodologies departing from the traditional atomic approach to social systems that is implied by linear regression analysis. There are various ways in which multilevel considerations are important for social network analysis. This chapter starts by sketching the importance of multilevel issues for traditional social network analysis, and briefly reviewing multilevel anal- ysis and statistical models for social networks. It continues by treating multilevel network analysis, defined as network analysis in multiple ‘parallel’ groups, which is important for gauging the variability between such groups and for the generalizability of results. Finally, a new development is discussed which is the analysis of multilevel networks, defined as networks including several node sets of different kinds, where the nature of ties differs according to the kind of nodes they connect.