st: Is rho the right indicator in a multilevel analysis?

[KERSTEN Sarah <sarah.kersten@unifr.ch>]

Dear Statalist,
I am currently doing research about gender differences regarding the time use of paid and unpaid work, the dependent variable is therefore hours worked per week. This makes two analyses for paid and unpaid work, plus two for men and women. Important to say also that it is a multilevel analysis, as I have 26 unities and for each different variables coming from policies, economies etc. The dependent variable (lets just look at employed work) is censored, as I integrate also unemployed people, so there are a lot of zero's. This is why I use xttobit, I read quite a lot studies using this with no panel data. Now my problem is, that I am mostly interested in the level 2 variables, because my hypotheses is that the individual time use is influenced by the different welfare regimes etc. The only indicator the stata output gives me about the relevance of the second level is rho, in my understanding. It is so small (depending on the model from 0.02% to 0.005%) that I think the second !
 level is not relevant, contradicting a little bit actual research. 
My questions now are: is rho the only indicator, since I cannot calculate a null model (why?) with xttobit and calculate R square, about the influence of the second level variables? Is this method the right one?

Thanks a lot,
Sarah

--
Sarah Kersten
Diplomassistentin
Universität Fribourg
Studienbereich Soziologie, Sozialpolitik und Sozialarbeit 
Rte des Bonnesfontaines 11 
CH-1700 Fribourg 
Tel. 026 300 77 73 



--
Sarah Kersten
Diplomassistentin
Universität Fribourg
Studienbereich Soziologie, Sozialpolitik und Sozialarbeit 
Rte des Bonnesfontaines 11 
CH-1700 Fribourg 
Tel. 026 300 77 73 
_________________________________________________________________________
Geschlechtsspezifische Ungleichheiten in der schweizerischen Arbeitswelt:
Politische und institutionelle Einflussfaktoren (NFP60) www.unifr.ch/go/gungle



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