SAVE THE DATE: The International Conference on Multilevel Analysis

[Terrence Jorgensen]

Below is an announcement I am forwarding, on behalf of conference organizers.  This is a great (small, but impactful and stimulating) conference relevant to all areas of multilevel modeling (including multilevel SEM).

Terrence D. Jorgensen

Assistant Professor, Methods and Statistics

Research Institute for Child Development and Education, the University of Amsterdam

http://www.uva.nl/profile/t.d.jorgensen

The 15^th International Multilevel Conference will be held on April 14-15, 2026.

The conference will be about all aspects of statistical multilevel analysis: innovative applications, theory, software, and methodology. The conference will be in an informal style, with much room for discussion. It will be held in the city centre of Utrecht, within a quarter hour walk or a five-minute bus ride from the Central railway station.

 

Keynote speakers include prof. dr. Hedeker on two-stage mixed-effects location scale models for intensive longitudinal data and prof. dr. Bürkner on amortized Bayesian inference. 

 

More details on abstract submission and the pre- and post-conference workshops will follow soon. Keep an eye on the website for more information: http://multilevel.fss.uu.nl/

[cff...@gmail.com]

Thanks Terrence! I wonder, how come there's no journal of multilevel analysis?

[Jeremy Miles]

On Tue, 9 Sept 2025 at 12:52, cff...@gmail.com <cff...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks Terrence! I wonder, how come there's no journal of multilevel analysis?

(Not Terrence here). I remember Jack McArdle many years ago saying  that there shouldn't be a journal "Structural Equation Modelling" - there's no Journal of ANOVA, or  Journal of Regression. It creates divisions - where does SEM start, and multilevel end, and multilevel start and IRT end. Journals should be focused on problems, not solutions to problems (is my poor attempt to paraphrase what he said).

The other answer is that there's no journal of multilevel analysis, because no one has made one. In the world of open access online journals, starting a journal is many times easier than it used to be. But it is still hard work to start it, and hard work to keep it going. George Marcoulides was the first editor of the SEM journal (in 1994), and I would imagine did a huge amount of work to get it going, and keep it going. He is currently the editor (I think he has been the editor the whole time, but I'm not sure). I've been an associate editor for a  couple of journals for a 5 year term, and I found that pretty exhausting. I can't imagine being the editor for more than 30 years.

Jeremy

[Shu Fai Cheung (張樹輝)]

I recall there was a newsletter for multilevel modeling. I should have read some of them, but it's the days when we still used floppy disks to store things. I couldn't find any of their, if any, on my computer. Maybe there are some hard copies of them somewhere in the (physical) file cabinets that I rarely open now. :)

I searched, and this is the first entry I found, which seems to be the last edition/issue of the newsletter:

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/cmm/migrated/documents/new18-1.pdf

-- Shu Fai

[Terrence Jorgensen]

Bumping this on behalf of the organizers:

The 15th International Multilevel Conference will be held on April 14-15, 2026.

The conference will be about all aspects of statistical multilevel analysis: innovative applications, theory, software, and methodology. The conference will be in an informal style, with much room for discussion. It will be held in the city centre of Utrecht, within a quarter hour walk or a five-minute bus ride from the Central railway station.

Keynote speakers include prof. dr. Hedeker on two-stage mixed-effects location scale models for intensive longitudinal data and prof. dr. Bürkner on probabilistic amortized Bayesian inference for multilevel models. 

 

Abstract submission: Deadline 23 February

Deadline for submitting an abstract: If you submit before the 23rd of February (2026), you will be notified before the 9th of March if your abstract is accepted. 

This edition of the conference will also have the option for researchers working with empirical data to submit posters with questions about their analyses or sampling design. During the conference, you will have the opportunity to receive feedback on your (ongoing) research.

Young Researcher Award

The abstracts of four PhD students will be selected, and these PhD students will be invited to present their work in a special symposium. The best presentation will be awarded during the closing ceremony with the 'Best PhD Multilevel Presentation Award' and their conference fee will be reimbursed. 

 

Pre- and Post-conference workshops

There will be two workshop opportunities this year! Prof. dr. Hedeker will be teaching a pre-conference workshop on modeling ILD data with (mixed-effects location scale) multilevel models and prof. dr. Bürkner will teach a post-conference workshop on using the brms R package to fit Bayesian generalized (non-)linear multilevel models. More details on these workshops can be found on the website.

 

Registration is now open and further information can be found on the conference website: http://multilevel.fss.uu.nl/ 

With kind regards,

 

Emmeke Aarts, Sara van Erp, and Beth Grandfield

Utrecht University, The Netherlands