Student or educator? Sign up with your school email and get 6 months of Pro free.
Cited by 758

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 4 of the 4 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Should I Use Fixed or Random Effects?

Clark, Tom S., Linzer, Drew A.·2015·Political Science Research and Methods

Abstract

Empirical analyses in social science frequently confront quantitative data that are clustered or grouped. To account for group-level variation and improve model fit, researchers will commonly specify either a fixed- or random-effects model. But current advice on which approach should be preferred, and under what conditions, remains vague and sometimes contradictory. This study performs a series of Monte Carlo simulations to evaluate the total error due to bias and variance in the inferences of each model, for typical sizes and types of datasets encountered in applied research. The results offer a typology of dataset characteristics to help researchers choose a preferred model.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1017/psrm.2014.32

Cites

4 of 4 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Show all 4 references

Research works printed but not linked: 12

  1. 10.1093/pan/mpl012 · DOI · Paper page
  2. 10.1093/pan/mpp004 · DOI · Paper page
  3. 10.1017/CBO9780511790928 · DOI · Paper page
  4. 10.1214/009053604000001048 · DOI · Paper page
  5. Gelman, 2007, Data Analysis Using Regression and Multi-level/Hierarchical Models
  6. Greene, 2012, Econometric Analysis, Seventh Edition
  7. Kennedy, 2003, A Guide to Econometrics
  8. 10.4135/9781849209366 · DOI · Paper page
  9. 10.1093/pan/mpm002 · DOI · Paper page
  10. Robinson, 1998, Encyclopedia of Biostatistics, 6, 4713
  11. Wooldridge, 2010, Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data
  12. 10.1093/pan/mpr008 · DOI

Cited by

See all 758

Metadata

Authors
Clark, T. S., & Linzer, D. A.
Venue
Political Science Research and Methods
Published
2014-11-21
Volume
3
Issue
2
Pages
399-408
ISSN
  • 2049-8470 (ISSN-L)
  • 2049-8489
OpenAlex
W2138432709
Cited by
758
References
4
FWCI
138.52
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review

How to cite

Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Should I Use Fixed or Random Effects? https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1017/psrm.2014.32
The paper
Clark, T. S., & Linzer, D. A. (2015). Should I Use Fixed or Random Effects? Political Science Research and Methods. https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2014.32

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.