Interpreting and Understanding Logits, Probits, and Other Nonlinear Probability Models
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Methods textbooks in sociology and other social sciences routinely recommend the use of the logit or probit model when an outcome variable is binary, an ordered logit or ordered probit when it is ordinal, and a multinomial logit when it has more than two categories. But these methodological guidelines take little or no account of a body of work that, over the past 30 years, has pointed to problematic aspects of these nonlinear probability models and, particularly, to difficulties in interpreting their parameters. In this review, we draw on that literature to explain the problems, show how they manifest themselves in research, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of alternatives that have been suggested, and point to lines of further analysis.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.017 | 0.046 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".