Professor Fiona A Steele
BSc, MSc, PhD, FBA
Professor of Social Statistics
email: fiona.steele@bristol.ac.uk
0.1 mb)Research interests
- Statistical methods for social research, including multilevel modelling, event history (survival) analysis and structural equation modelling. Methodological research includes work on event history analysis for repeated events, competing risks and multiple states, multilevel models for event history data with long-term survivors, multilevel analysis of correlated processes, multilevel factor analysis, and development of an imputation system for the 2001 census.
- Applications in demography (including contraceptive discontinuation and method switching for family planning evaluation, child health in developing countries, the impact of women’s participation in credit programmes in Bangladesh, the relationship between childbearing and partnership outcomes in Britain, and the impact of school resources on pupil attainment in Britain)
Biography and current projects
Fiona's main interests are in methodological research motivated by social science problems, particularly in the field of demography. She is currently working on three ESRC-funded research projects: LEMMA (i.e: Learning Environment for Multilevel Methodology and Applications), an examination of the impact of family socioeconomic status on child and adolescent outcomes (with the Centre for Markets and Public Organisation in Bristol), and hierarchical analysis of unit nonresponse in sample surveys (with the University of Southampton).
As part of the LEMMA project, Fiona has coordinated the development of our online training system for multilevel modelling. The system contains a set of graduated modules, starting from an introduction to quantitative research and progressing to multilevel modelling of continuous data.
Fiona is actively involved in the Royal Statistical Society as a member of Council, the Social Statistics Section committee, and the Avon Local Group. She is also an Associate Editor of the Journal of Royal Statistical Society, Series A: Statistics in Society. She has been awarded the Society’s Guy Medal in Bronze for 2008. Fiona is also a member of the ESRC Research Resources Board, which has responsibility for developing resources such as data, research methods, and information technology for UK social research.
Professor Steele's recent presentations
Keynote address, Australian Statistical
Congress: Multilevel Models for Longitudinal Data 
Assessing the Impact of School Resources on Pupil Attainment