You're Doing it Wrong

While this phrase tends to be more prevalent for fans of Fark.com, it seems to be aptly applied here. Now I know that Hierarchical Linear Modeling has only been around since I was watching Danger Mouse and Heathcliff and playing my brand new Atari; however, one would think there has been enough time to get the terminology down.

Now I will say that multilevel models do tend to go by a host of names including: hierarchical linear model, generalized linear mixed models, nested models, random coefficients model, random effects model, random parameter model, HLM, variance components modeling, and probably a few others. One name it does NOT go by, however, is hierarchical regression. Hierarchical regression refers to a method of multiple regression where one can look at the unique variance an indepenent variable contributes to the prediction of some outcome, after other independent variables have been entered into a regression equation. The order of entry for the predictors are based on theory (one hopes!)

Anywho, today's "failure" comes to us from Regressing in Florida who wrote the following in his/her paper:

"As children were nested within centers and treatment occurred in small groups within each center, Hierarchical Linear Modeling (Raudenbush & Bryk, 200) was used to nest children within center"

Reviewer's comment: P6. "Hierarchical modeling should only be used for verification of a model, not for finding a model (multilevel modeling is more appropriate for this)."

I'm going to stop typing so I can cry....this one really hurts.....