Abstract
The preceding chapters have illustrated the validity, the contribution, and the fertility of the multilevel approach applied to different social sciences; but they have also described the main criticisms levelled at the approach as well as the limits encountered when it is applied with excessive rigour.The multilevel approach provides a solution to the problems that occur when working on a single level. It avoids the risks of the ecological and atomistic fallacies by accommodating the effects of characteristics operating at different aggregation levels. By contrast, when we want to examine the set of dynamic, reciprocal, and non-linear relationships that exist inside each level and between levels, the multilevel approach still seems too limited in its present form. We see the need to extend its scope to other analytical strategies introducing new hypotheses. We should investigate and verify whether more complex multilevel models might not offer a fuller approach for the social sciences examined here.
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Courgeau, D. (2003). General Conclusion. In: Courgeau, D. (eds) Methodology and Epistemology of Multilevel Analysis. Methodos Series, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4675-9_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4675-9_8
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