After adjustment of individual-level covariates, including stress at the individual level, area-level stress was significantly associated with a higher likelihood of death from ischemic heart disease in men.
While our use of census data to derive an area measure of SES may not completely reflect data at the individual level, area-based measures have been suggested to capture elements of the socioeconomic environment that may not be obtainable by individual-level data [ 37].
Apart from this, the tie-creating executives also bring personal expertise, managerial skills, and specific individual-level areas of knowledge to the focal firm (e.g., Pfeffer and Salancik 1978).
Individual level and area level variables will be used in this study.
The predictors for the three other outcomes were: age, socio-economic status (assessed at individual level and area level), nicotine dependency and delay discounting.
In contrast to self-rated health, GHQ-4 score shows little relationship with any of the social position measures, either at the individual level or area and school levels (Table 3).
Potential confounding factors at the individual level include: area of residence, employment status, deprivation, age, gender, lifestyle behaviours, health, mental health, social skills and support, ability to engage with others and offending history.
"We need to carry out research on density and other breast cancer risk factors at the individual level by area of residence to get to the bottom of this".
Thus, exposure-outcome relations analysed within areas (individual level) and between areas (group level) may yield different results because the relations are prone to different sources of bias or to the presence of a context effect.
Multilevel models account for the clustering of individual characteristics within areas and allow the examination of residual components for different levels (eg, individual levels and area levels) separately.
The key unanswerable question is whether individual level information or area based information better reflect health needs at practice level?
