ABSTRACT
Predicting the probability that an event will or will not occur, as well as identifying the variables useful in making the prediction, is important in the health sciences; it is central to risk research. Two statistical techniques can be used appropriately to predict a dichotomous dependent variable: discriminant analysis and logistic regression. In the last chapter, we discussed linear regression, used when the dependent variable is continuous. Discriminant analysis can be used with a dichotomous dependent variable, but the method requires several assumptions for the predictions to be optimal. The Grimm and Yarnold (1995) book provides more extensive, but still nontechnical, chapters on discriminant analysis and on logistic regression than we present here.
