ABSTRACT
One of the biggest challenges of conducting insightful, informative, and impactful research on groups is effectively dealing with the multiple levels that comprise group phenomena. That is, group phenomena entail multiple levels of theory and constructs, measurement, and data analysis. What are you talking about, you may say. I want to study groups, that is the level I’m interested in, why should I care about other levels? My answer is, because the world is complex. Even the most “bare-bones” group situations entail a minimum of three levels: group (i.e., between group), individual (i.e., person within group), and time (i.e., within person over time). There are potentially other levels as well. Groups could be embedded in an organizational system with many higher, nested levels. One could be interested in dyadic relations embedded within groups, including families and work teams. You may not be interested in all these levels, but they nonetheless merit consideration in your theorizing, research design, and measurement.
