s-news
[Top] [All Lists]

something between multinom() and polr()/lrm()

To: s-news@lists.biostat.wustl.edu
Subject: something between multinom() and polr()/lrm()
From: Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper@unh.edu>
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 12:45:59 -0400 (EDT)

Hello again S-news-ers,

After reading articles, help files, s-news and R archives, and, of course V&R, I'm starting to understand regression with an ordinal response variable. But I have a question (which may demonstrate that I really don't understand regression with an ordinal response variable)...

I have an ordinal variable with 5 levels (e.g., high, medium-high, medium, medium-low, and low) and 2 independent continuous variables.

Proportional odds logistic regression (e.g., polr() or lrm()) assumes that the effect of each independent variable is constant across the 5 levels of the ordinal dependent variable. Which, as I understand it, is at the heart of the proportional odds assumption.

Multinomial logit models (e.g., multinom()) allows the effect of the independent variables to differ across the levels of the categorical dependent variable, but does not use the information that our dependent variable is an ordered response.

Is there something out there in S-plus that I could use when the proportional odds assumption is violated that has the flexibility of the multinomial logit (with different effects sizes by level) but still accounts for the fact that I've got an ordered dependent variable? I feel like I must be missing or not understanding something.

Thank you for your help!

Cheers,
Andy

******************************************************************
"What if the Hokey Pokey is all it really is about?" - Jimmy Buffett

Andrew B. Cooper, Ph.D.
Department of Natural Resources
Nesmith  Hall, Rm 208A
University of New Hampshire
Durham, NH  03824

andrew.cooper@unh.edu
603.862.4254, 603.862.4976 (FAX)

http://www.unh.edu/natural-resources/fac-cooper.html
******************************************************************

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>