Detection of outliers and influential observations in binary Logistic regression: An empirical study

Abstract

Logistic regression is one of the most frequently used statistical methods as a standard method of data analysis in many fields over the last decade. However, analysis of residuals and identification of influential outliers are not studied so frequently to check the adequacy of the fitted logistic regression model. Detection of outliers and influential cases and corresponding treatment is very crucial task of any modeling exercise. A failure to detect influential cases can have severe distortion on the validity of the inferences drawn from such modeling. The aim of this study is to evaluate different measures of standardized residuals and diagnostic statistics by graphical methods to identify potential outliers. Evaluation of diagnostic statistics and their graphical display detected 25 cases as outliers but they did not play notable effect on parameter estimates and summary measures of fits. It is recommended to use residual analysis and note outlying cases that can frequently lead to valuable insights for strengthening the model. © 2011 Asian Network for Scientific Information.