IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mar/magkse/201335.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Logistic Regression for Extremely Rare Events: The Case of School Shootings

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Westphal

    (University of Marburg)

Abstract

School shootings are often used in public policy debate as a justification for increased regulation, based on qualitative arguments. However, to date, no effort has been made to find valid quantitative evidence for the claims bolstering the regulation recommendations. In defense of this absence of evidence, it is usually argued that the rarity of such events does not allow the employment of quantitative methods. This paper, using a simulation study, shows that, based on the number of shool shootings in the United States and Germany combined, the well-known method of logistic regression can be applied to a case-control study, making it possible to at least test for an association between hypothesized influential variables and the occurrences. Moderate relative risks, explained by an observed variable, would lead to a high power of the appropriate test. A moderate numbers of cases generated by such a variable would suffice to show a significant association.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Westphal, 2013. "Logistic Regression for Extremely Rare Events: The Case of School Shootings," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201335, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    • Handle: RePEc:mar:magkse:201335
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.uni-marburg.de/en/fb02/research-groups/economics/macroeconomics/research/magks-joint-discussion-papers-in-economics/papers/2013-papers/35-2013_westphal.pdf
    File Function: First 201335
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sooyeon Kang, 2023. "Upping the ante without taking up arms: Why mass movements escalate demands," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 60(1), pages 73-87, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Rare Events; Logistic Regression; Case-Control Studies; School Shootings;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C25 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models; Discrete Regressors; Proportions; Probabilities
    • C35 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models; Discrete Regressors; Proportions
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mar:magkse:201335. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bernd Hayo (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vamarde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.