Model Building

What It Really Means to Take an Interaction Out of a Model

When you’re model building, a key decision is which interaction terms to include.

As a general rule, the default in regression is to leave them out. Add interactions only with a solid reason. It would seem like data fishing to simply add in all possible interactions.

And yet, that’s a common practice in most ANOVA models: put in all possible interactions and only take them out if there’s a solid reason. Even many software procedures default to creating interactions among categorical predictors.

Simplifying a Categorical Predictor in Regression Models

by Jeff Meyer Leave a Comment

One of the many decisions you have to make when model building is which form each predictor variable should take. One specific version of this decision is whether to combine categories of a categorical predictor.

The greater the number of parameter estimates in a model the greater the number of observations that are needed to keep power constant. The parameter estimates in a linear [Read more…] about Simplifying a Categorical Predictor in Regression Models

Descriptives Before Model Building

by Jeff Meyer Leave a Comment

One approach to model building is to use all predictors that make theoretical sense in the first model. For example, a first model for determining birth weight could include mother’s age, education, marital status, race, weight gain during pregnancy and gestation period.

The main effects of this model show that a mother’s education level and marital status are insignificant.
[Read more…] about Descriptives Before Model Building

Member Training: Model Building Approaches

by TAF Support

There is a bit of art and experience to model building. You need to build a model to answer your research question but how do you build a statistical model when there are no instructions in the box?

Should you start with all your predictors or look at each one separately? Do you always take out non-significant variables and do you always leave in significant ones?

Should I Specify a Model Predictor as Categorical or Continuous?

by Karen Grace-Martin Leave a Comment

Predictor variables in statistical models can be treated as either continuous or categorical.

Usually, this is a very straightforward decision.

Categorical predictors, like treatment group, marital status, or highest educational degree should be specified as categorical.

Likewise, continuous predictors, like age, systolic blood pressure, or percentage of ground cover should be specified as continuous.

But there are numerical predictors that aren’t continuous. And these can sometimes make sense to treat as continuous and sometimes make sense as categorical.

Differences in Model Building Between Explanatory and Predictive Models

by Jeff Meyer 8 Comments

by Jeff Meyer, MPA, MBA

Suppose you are asked to create a model that will predict who will drop out of a program your organization offers. You decide to use a binary logistic regression because your outcome has two values: “0” for not dropping out and “1” for dropping out.

Most of us were trained in building models for the purpose of understanding and explaining the relationships between an outcome and a set of predictors. But model building works differently for purely predictive models. Where do we go from here? [Read more…] about Differences in Model Building Between Explanatory and Predictive Models