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Home | Academic Solutions | Directory of Statistical Analyses | Regression Analysis | What is Logistic Regression?

What is Logistic Regression?

Logistic regression is the appropriate regression analysis to conduct when the dependent variable is dichotomous (binary). Like all regression
analyses, the logistic regression is a predictive analysis. Logistic regression is used to describe data and to explain the relationship between one
dependent binary variable and one or more nominal, ordinal, interval or ratio-level independent variables.

Sometimes logistic regressions are dicult to interpret; the Intellectus Statistics tool easily allows you to conduct the analysis, then in plain
English interprets the output.

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Type of questions that a logistics regression can examine.

How does the probability of getting lung cancer (yes vs. no) change for every additional pound of overweight and for every pack of cigarettes
smoked per day?

Do body weight calorie intake, fat intake, and participant age have an inuence on heart attacks (yes vs. no)?
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Logistics Regression major assumptions: Shares

That the outcome must be discrete, otherwise explained as, the dependent variable should be dichotomous in nature (e.g., presence vs. absent);
There should be no outliers in the data, which can be assessed by converting the continuous predictors to standardized, or z scores, and remove

values below -3.29 or greater than 3.29.
There should be no high intercorrelations (multicollinearity) among the predictors. This can be assessed by a correlation matrix among the
predictors. Tabachnick and Fidell (2012) suggest that as long correlation coecients among independent variables are less than 0.90 the
assumption is met.
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3/16/2017 WhatisLogisticRegression?StatisticsSolutions
Logistic regression assumes that the dependent variable is a stochastic event. For example, if we analyze a pesticides kill rate, the outcome
event is either killed or alive. Since even the most resistant bug can only be either of these two states, logistic regression thinks in likelihoods of
the bug getting killed. If the likelihood of killing the bug is > 0.5 it is assumed dead, if it is < 0.5 it is assumed alive.

The outcome variable which must be coded as 0 and 1 is placed in the rst box labeled Dependent, while all predictors are entered into the
Covariates box (categorical variables should be appropriately dummy coded). Sometimes instead of a logit model for logistic regression a probit
model is used. The following graph shows the dierence for a logit and a probit model for dierent values (-4,4). Both models are commonly
used in logistic regression, and in most cases, a model is tted with both functions and the function with the better t is chosen. However, probit
assumes normal distribution of the probability of the event, when logit assumes the log distribution. Thus the dierence between logit and probit
is typically seen in small samples.

At the center of the logistic regression analysis is the task estimating the log odds of an event. Mathematically, logistic regression estimates a
multiple linear regression function dened as:

logit(p)

for i = 1n .

Overtting. When selecting the model for the logistic regression analysis, another important consideration is the model t. Adding independent
variables to a logistic regression model will always increase its statistical validity, because it will always explain a bit more variance of the log
odds (typically expressed as R). However, adding more and more variables to the model makes it inecient and over tting occurs.

Reporting the R2 . Nevertheless, many people want an equivalent way of describing how good a particular model is, and numerous pseudo-R2
values have been developed. These should be interpreted with extreme caution as they have many computational issues which cause them to
be articially high or low. A better approach is to present any of the goodness of t tests available; Hosmer-Lemeshow is a commonly used
measure of goodness of t based on the Chi-square test (which makes sense given that logistic regression is related to crosstabulation).

Statistics Solutions or the Intellectus Statistics software can assist with your quantitative analysis by editing your methodology and results
chapters.

*Please call 877-437-8622 to request a quote based on the specics of your research, or email Info@StatisticsSolutions.com.

Related Pages:

Conduct and Interpret a Logistic Regression

Assumptions of Logistic Regression

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Assumptions of Linear
Regression

Assumptions of Logistic
Regression

Assumptions of Multiple
Linear Regression

Binary Logistic Regressions

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