Modern Applications of Cross-classified Multilevel Models (CCMMs) in Social and Behavioral Research: Illustrations with R Package PLmixed

Sijia Huang
MS, 2021
Wu, Yingnian
Respondents in social and behavioral studies often belong to two or more non-nestedhigher-level groups of aggregation simultaneously, yielding the so-called cross-classified data structure. For example, in education, students belong to the schools they attend and the neighborhoods they live in, and there exists no exact nesting between the schools and neighborhoods. The cross-classified multilevel model (CCMM; Goldstein, 1994; Rasbash & Goldstein, 1994) was introduced as an extension of the standard multilevel model to accommodate the prevalent cross-classified data. The CCMM has been mainly applied in education to study the impacts of various contexts on certain outcomes, such as the influence of schools and neighborhoods on smoking behaviors among adolescents (Dunn, Richmond, Milliren, & Subramanian, 2015). However, applications of the CCMM in other fields are relatively scant and little-known. One potential reason for this lack of applications could be the limited availability of software programs that allow the easy fit of the CCMM.
2021