Comparing the efficacy of fixed effect and MAIHDA models in predicting outcomes for intersectional social strata

This investigation examines the efficacy of multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy (MAIHDA) over fixed effect models when performing intersectional studies. The research questions are: 1) What are typical strata representation rates and outcomes on physics research-based assessments? 2) To what extent do MAIHDA models create more accurate predicted strata outcomes than fixed effects models? 3) To what extent do MAIHDA models allow the modeling of smaller strata sample sizes? We simulated 3,000 datasets based on real-world data from 5,955 students on the LASSO platform. We found that MAIHDA created more accurate and precise predictions than fixed effect models. We also found that using MAIHDA could allow researchers to disaggregate their data further, creating smaller group sample sizes while maintaining more accurate findings than fixed effect models. We recommend using MAIHDA over fixed effect models for intersectional investigations.