Liden et al (2004, PDF) is an example of a study examining employees in work groups in an organisation. Thus, measures are obtained of both individual workers and of the work groups that they belong too. The data is analysed using multilevel modelling (or what the paper calls HLM).

• How can the HLM results in the paper be explained in a way that is meaningful for someone with only a basic level of statistical knowledge?
• What resources could help someone with only a basic level of statistical knowledge understand the paper?

Note: The above questions are based on an email I received asking about how to interpret the results of Liden et al (2004). I'll probably add an answer. But I thought others might also have answers, and that the answer might be relevant to others.

The abstract:

Social loafing was investigated by testing a multilevel model among 23 intact work groups comprised of 168 employees representing two organizations. Results demonstrated that as hypothesized at the individual level, increases in task interdependence and decreases in task visibility and distributive justice were associated with greater occurrence of social loafing. At the group level, increased group size and decreased cohesiveness were related to increased levels of social loafing. Of particular interest was the finding that group member perceptions of perceived coworker loafing was associated with reduced social loafing, opposite of our predictions. We suggested that this unexpected finding may provide evidence of a social compensation effect.

References

• Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A., & Bennett, N. (2004). Social loafing: A field investigation. Journal of Management, 30(2), 285-304. PDF