ABSTRACT
Social research regularly involves problems that investigate the relationship between individuals and society. The general concept is that individuals interact with the social contexts to which they belong, that individual persons are influenced by the social groups or contexts to which they belong, and that those groups are in turn influenced by the individuals who make up that group. The individuals and the social groups are conceptualized as a hierarchical system of individuals nested within groups, with individuals and groups defined at separate levels of this hierarchical system. Naturally, such systems can be observed at different hierarchical levels, and variables may be defined at each level. This leads to research into the relationships between variables characterizing individuals and variables characterizing groups, a kind of research that is generally referred to as multilevel research.
