The following provides an outline of some of the important steps in analyzing multilevel data. I
am only highlighting steps here that are particular to HLM. Thus, prior to running any model,
thorough descriptive statistics should be run and variable types should be considered (i.e., binary,
ordinal, nominal, count, continuous). To a certain extent, good data analysis is good data
analysis. Thus, this is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all the steps in analyzing multilevel
data but does provide some specific direction about critical steps and how to use SPSS and HLM
to do them.