Contextual analysis, the study of the role of the group context on actions and attitudes of individuals, is a useful technique in the study of education, neighborhoods, census tracts, election districts, and the family. However, the effective use of contextual analysis has involved overcoming a number of issues, such as group boundaries, the mobility of the individuals within a group, overlapping groups, missing individual data, and the choice of statistical models. Contextual Analysis offers researchers a guide for selecting the best model to use. Written in a straightforward style, the book explores such topics as contextual analysis with absolute effects, with relative effects, and the choice between regression coefficients as fixed parameters or as random variables.