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51 Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Q. 5 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/npvolsq51 and id is 1 raw text is: Article Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 2022, Vol. 51(1) 5-30 Reconciling Theory and ŠThe Author(s)2021 Article reuse guidelines: Context in Com parative sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1 I 177/0899764021989445 Nonprofit Research journals-sagepub.com/home/nvs OSAGE Yi Zhao', Joseph Galaskiewicz' and Eunsung Yoon' Abstract The article reviews a family of multilevel models that can be used to build general theories of the nonprofit sector that are still sensitive to variations in context. The comparative study of the nonprofit (or nongovernmental) sector presents formidable challenges to social scientists who are attempting to advance theory on the sector. Ostensibly, the goal is to model and test theories that are generalizable. Yet, as scholars study topics such as volunteerism, donations, governance, management, advocacy, accountability, and the like in different political, economic, and cultural contexts, they often find different patterns across cases. After reviewing the issues and introducing the idea that time (or more specifically events) can be thought of as context as well, we present an analytical approach for doing comparative research using the framework of hierarchical linear modeling. Keywords nonprofit sector, multilevel modeling, comparative case analysis, theory development Introduction Although the goal of social science is to construct and test theories that are generaliz- able, scholars often encounter variation in the cultural, social, political, economic, and historical contexts in which human and organizational behaviors are embedded. This article offers an analytic strategy to model these contextual effects over time. We 'The University of Arizona, Tucson, USA Corresponding Author: Joseph Galaskiewicz, School of Sociology, The University of Arizona, 1 145 E. South Campus Drive, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. Email: galaskie@arizona.edu