Multilevel or mixed effects models are commonly applied to hierarchical data. The level 2 residuals, which are otherwise known as random effects, are often of both substantive and diagnostic interest. Substantively, they are frequently used for institutional comparisons or rankings....

Multilevel or mixed effects models are commonly applied to hierarchical data; for example, see Goldstein (2003), Raudenbush and Bryk (2002), and Laird and Ware (1982). Although there exist many outputs from such an analysis, the level-2 residuals, otherwise known as random effects, are often of...