The article briefly describes multilevel models and presents their simplest applications. After the methodological and statistical need for this procedure is explained, real data are used to demonstrate how a hierarchical linear model is constructed. The article presents models with a random intercept, models with random slopes, and models with explanatory variables measured at higher levels. In the conclusion, other possible applications of multilevel analysis are discussed, and the basic readings on multilevel analysis are presented.
In spite of the complicated plurality of the present ways of thinking about speech and the prerequisites of speech, it is possible to say that the various ways of thinking could be placed somewhere between the end points the „absolute“ formalism and the „consistent“ functionalism with the distinct transitional zone in between. One can assume that the development tends from the formalism to the functionalism and this means the way of rising of the explanatory power of the theories. In order to make the process successful it is necessary to look for such formal means that are able to rationally express the knowledge of consistent functionalistic theories. If it were not for this fact, the way from the „absolute“ formalism to the „consistent“ functionalism would be the unwished way from the rationalism to non-rationalistic speculations, far away from the bounds of science. If we insisted on the petrification of the so far existed formalisms, in the name of the aimed grade of formalisation, it would mean to persist on the knowledge of speech on interest of the brilliant formal language exercises.
Professor Josef Polišenský PhD. (December 16, 1915 - January 11, 2001) was an important Czech historian with a wide range of professional interest. He dedicated himself primarily to the problematics of the Thirty-Year-War and, concretely, to the Uprising of the Czech Estates in 1618 - 1620 in a broad international context. To the many histoirical problems of the Early Modern and Modern period he studied belongs also the problematics of the history of Latin America. His merits in founding the Czech Ibero-American studies were by rights appreciated abroad. The author of the article appraises the Scientific work of Professor Polišenský, from his PhD. dissertation from the year 1939, follows his professional career and his life history in the context of the ups and downs of the Czech national history, in the context of all the decoys, pressures and trials that endangered an intellectual who wasn’t indifferent to the political events. To Professor Polišenský can be given a credit for the fact that the Czech historiography in the years 1948 to 1989 was able to keep up with the European historiographical paradigms and that retained a respectable face at the same time. Unfortunately, at the moment when Polišenský found himself at the height of his Creative power, this couldn’t help him. On the contrary, it did a harm to this excellent schollar in the situation when the regime put ideological and political pressure on the science. The results of the work o f the internationally renowned scholar are and will manifest themselves also in the works of his pupils, many of them foreigners, in the activity of future generations of historians, ethnologists, archivists and specialists of other areas.