Example 51.2 Logistic Modeling with Categorical Predictors

Consider a study of the analgesic effects of treatments on elderly patients with neuralgia. Two test treatments and a placebo are compared. The response variable is whether the patient reported pain or not. Researchers recorded the age and gender of 60 patients and the duration of complaint before the treatment began. The following DATA step creates the data set Neuralgia:

   Data Neuralgia;
      input Treatment $ Sex $ Age Duration Pain $ @@;
      datalines;
   P  F  68   1  No   B  M  74  16  No  P  F  67  30  No
   P  M  66  26  Yes  B  F  67  28  No  B  F  77  16  No
   A  F  71  12  No   B  F  72  50  No  B  F  76   9  Yes
   A  M  71  17  Yes  A  F  63  27  No  A  F  69  18  Yes
   B  F  66  12  No   A  M  62  42  No  P  F  64   1  Yes
   A  F  64  17  No   P  M  74   4  No  A  F  72  25  No
   P  M  70   1  Yes  B  M  66  19  No  B  M  59  29  No
   A  F  64  30  No   A  M  70  28  No  A  M  69   1  No
   B  F  78   1  No   P  M  83   1  Yes B  F  69  42  No
   B  M  75  30  Yes  P  M  77  29  Yes P  F  79  20  Yes
   A  M  70  12  No   A  F  69  12  No  B  F  65  14  No
   B  M  70   1  No   B  M  67  23  No  A  M  76  25  Yes
   P  M  78  12  Yes  B  M  77   1  Yes B  F  69  24  No
   P  M  66   4  Yes  P  F  65  29  No  P  M  60  26  Yes
   A  M  78  15  Yes  B  M  75  21  Yes A  F  67  11  No
   P  F  72  27  No   P  F  70  13  Yes A  M  75   6  Yes
   B  F  65   7  No   P  F  68  27  Yes P  M  68  11  Yes
   P  M  67  17  Yes  B  M  70  22  No  A  M  65  15  No
   P  F  67   1  Yes  A  M  67  10  No  P  F  72  11  Yes
   A  F  74   1  No   B  M  80  21  Yes A  F  69   3  No
   ;

The data set Neuralgia contains five variables: Treatment, Sex, Age, Duration, and Pain. The last variable, Pain, is the response variable. A specification of Pain=Yes indicates there was pain, and Pain=No indicates no pain. The variable Treatment is a categorical variable with three levels: A and B represent the two test treatments, and P represents the placebo treatment. The gender of the patients is given by the categorical variable Sex. The variable Age is the age of the patients, in years, when treatment began. The duration of complaint, in months, before the treatment began is given by the variable Duration.

The following statements use the LOGISTIC procedure to fit a two-way logit with interaction model for the effect of Treatment and Sex, with Age and Duration as covariates. The categorical variables Treatment and Sex are declared in the CLASS statement.

   proc logistic data=Neuralgia;
      class Treatment Sex;
      model Pain= Treatment Sex Treatment*Sex Age Duration / expb;
   run;

In this analysis, PROC LOGISTIC models the probability of no pain (Pain=No). By default, effect coding is used to represent the CLASS variables. Two design variables are created for Treatment and one for Sex, as shown in Output 51.2.1.

PROC LOGISTIC displays a table of the Type 3 analysis of effects based on the Wald test (Output 51.2.2). Note that the Treatment*Sex interaction and the duration of complaint are not statistically significant (0.9318 and 0.8752, respectively). This indicates that there is no evidence that the treatments affect pain differently in men and women, and no evidence that the pain outcome is related to the duration of pain.

Parameter estimates are displayed in Output 51.2.3. The Exp(Est) column contains the exponentiated parameter estimates requested with the EXPB option. These values can, but do not necessarily, represent odds ratios for the corresponding variables. For continuous explanatory variables, the Exp(Est) value corresponds to the odds ratio for a unit increase of the corresponding variable. For CLASS variables that use effect coding, the Exp(Est) values have no direct interpretation as a comparison of levels. However, when the reference coding is used, the Exp(Est) values represent the odds ratio between the corresponding level and the reference level. Following the parameter estimates table, PROC LOGISTIC displays the odds ratio estimates for those variables that are not involved in any interaction terms. If the variable is a CLASS variable, the odds ratio estimate comparing each level with the reference level is computed regardless of the coding scheme. In this analysis, since the model contains the Treatment*Sex interaction term, the odds ratios for Treatment and Sex were not computed. The odds ratio estimates for Age and Duration are precisely the values given in the Exp(Est) column in the parameter estimates table.

The following PROC LOGISTIC statements illustrate the use of forward selection on the data set Neuralgia to identify the effects that differentiate the two Pain responses. The option SELECTION=FORWARD is specified to carry out the forward selection. The term Treatment|Sex@2 illustrates another way to specify main effects and two-way interactions. (Note that, in this case, the "@2" is unnecessary because no interactions besides the two-way interaction are possible).

   proc logistic data=Neuralgia;
      class Treatment Sex;
      model Pain=Treatment|Sex@2 Age Duration
            /selection=forward expb;
   run;

Results of the forward selection process are summarized in Output 51.2.4. The variable Treatment is selected first, followed by Age and then Sex. The results are consistent with the previous analysis (Output 51.2.2) in which the Treatment*Sex interaction and Duration are not statistically significant.

Output 51.2.5 shows the Type 3 analysis of effects, the parameter estimates, and the odds ratio estimates for the selected model. All three variables, Treatment, Age, and Sex, are statistically significant at the 0.05 level (p=0.0018, p=0.0213, and p=0.0057, respectively). Since the selected model does not contain the Treatment*Sex interaction, odds ratios for Treatment and Sex are computed. The estimated odds ratio is 24.022 for treatment A versus placebo, 41.528 for Treatment B versus placebo, and 6.194 for female patients versus male patients. Note that these odds ratio estimates are not the same as the corresponding values in the Exp(Est) column in the parameter estimates table because effect coding was used. From Output 51.2.5, it is evident that both Treatment A and Treatment B are better than the placebo in reducing pain; females tend to have better improvement than males; and younger patients are faring better than older patients.

Finally, the following statements refit the previously selected model, except that reference coding is used for the CLASS variables instead of effect coding. The ODDSRATIO statements compute the odds ratios for the covariates. The ODS GRAPHICS statement and the PLOTS option are specified to produce plots of the results; the PLOTS(ONLY)= option specifies that only the requested plots of the oddsratios and the fitted model are displayed. Two CONTRAST statements are specified, and provide another method of producing the odds ratios. The contrast labeled ’Pairwise’ specifies three rows in the contrast matrix, L, for all the pairwise comparisons between the three levels of Treatment. The contrast labeled ’Female vs Male’ compares female to male patients. The option ESTIMATE=EXP is specified in both CONTRAST statements to exponentiate the estimates of . With the given specification of contrast coefficients, the first row of the ’Pairwise’ CONTRAST statement corresponds to the odds ratio of A versus P, the second row corresponds to B versus P, and the third row corresponds to A versus B. There is only one row in the ’Female vs Male’ CONTRAST statement, and it corresponds to the odds ratio comparing female to male patients.

   ods graphics on;
   proc logistic data=Neuralgia plots(only)=(oddsratio(range=clip) effect);
      class Treatment Sex /param=ref;
      model Pain= Treatment Sex age;
      oddsratio Treatment;
      oddsratio Sex;
      oddsratio age;
      contrast 'Pairwise' Treatment 1  0,
                          Treatment 0  1,
                          Treatment 1 -1 / estimate=exp;
      contrast 'Female vs Male' Sex 1 / estimate=exp;
   run;
   ods graphics off;

The reference coding is shown in Output 51.2.6. The Type 3 analysis of effects, the parameter estimates for the reference coding, and the odds ratio estimates are displayed in Output 51.2.7. Although the parameter estimates are different because of the different parameterizations, the "Type 3 Analysis of Effects" table and the "Odds Ratio" table remain the same as in Output 51.2.5. With effect coding, the treatment A parameter estimate (0.8772) estimates the effect of treatment A compared to the average effect of treatments A, B, and placebo. The treatment A estimate (3.1790) under the reference coding estimates the difference in effect of treatment A and the placebo treatment.

The ODDSRATIO statement results are shown in Output 51.2.8, and the resulting plot is displayed in Output 51.2.9. Note in Output 51.2.9 that the odds ratio confidence limits are truncated due to specifying the RANGE=CLIP option; this enables you to see which intervals contain "1" more clearly. The odds ratios are identical to those shown in the "Odds Ratio Estimates" table in Output 51.2.7 with the addition of the odds ratio for "Treatment A vs B". Both treatments A and B are highly effective over placebo in reducing pain, as can be seen from the odds ratios comparing treatment A against P and treatment B against P (the second and third rows in the table). However, the 95% confidence interval for the odds ratio comparing treatment A to B is (0.0932, 3.5889), indicating that the pain reduction effects of these two test treatments are not very different. Again, the ’Sex F vs M’ odds ratio shows that female patients fared better in obtaining relief from pain than male patients. The odds ratio for age shows that a patient one year older is 0.77 times as likely to show no pain; that is, younger patients have more improvement than older patients.

Output 51.2.9 Plot of the ODDSRATIO Statement Results

Output 51.2.10 contains two tables: the "Contrast Test Results" table and the "Contrast Rows Estimation and Testing Results" table. The former contains the overall Wald test for each CONTRAST statement. Although three rows are specified in the ’Pairwise’ CONTRAST statement, there are only two degrees of freedom, and the Wald test result is identical to the Type 3 analysis of Treatment in Output 51.2.7. The latter table contains estimates and tests of individual contrast rows. The estimates for the first two rows of the ’Pairwise’ CONTRAST statements are the same as those given in the two preceding odds ratio tables (Output 51.2.7 and Output 51.2.8). The third row estimates the odds ratio comparing A to B, agreeing with Output 51.2.8, and the last row computes the odds ratio comparing pain relief for females to that for males.

An ANCOVA-style plot of the model-predicted probabilities against the Age variable for each combination of Treatment and Sex is displayed in Output 51.2.11. This plot confirms that females always have a higher probability of pain reduction in each treatment group, the placebo treatment has a lower probability of success than the other treatments, and younger patients respond to treatment better than older patients.

Output 51.2.11 Model-Predicted Probabilities