R: How to Calculate Odds Ratios in Logistic Regression Model

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Logistic regression is a method we can use to fit a regression model when the response variable is binary.

When you fit a logistic regression model in R, the coefficients in the model summary represent the average change in the log of the odds of the response variable associated with a one unit increase in each predictor variable.

However, we’re often interested in calculating the odds ratio for the predictor variables in the model instead.

To quickly calculate the odds ratios for each predictor variable in the model, you can use the following syntax:

exp(coef(model))

You can also calculate a 95% confidence interval for each odds ratio by using the following syntax:

exp(cbind(Odds_Ratio = coef(model), confint(model)))

The following example shows how to use this syntax to calculate and interpret odds ratios for a logistic regression model in R.

Example: Calculating Odds Ratios in Logistic Regression Model in R

For this example, we’ll use the Default dataset from the ISLR package in R.

We can use the following code to load and view a summary of the dataset:

library(ISLR)

#view first five rows of Default dataset
head(Default)

  default student   balance    income
1      No      No  729.5265 44361.625
2      No     Yes  817.1804 12106.135
3      No      No 1073.5492 31767.139
4      No      No  529.2506 35704.494
5      No      No  785.6559 38463.496
6      No     Yes  919.5885  7491.559

This dataset contains the following information about 10,000 individuals:

• default: Indicates whether or not an individual defaulted.
• student: Indicates whether or not an individual is a student.
• balance: Average balance carried by an individual.
• income: Income of the individual.

We will use student status, bank balance, and income to build a logistic regression model that predicts the probability that a given individual defaults.

We can use the glm unction and specify family=’binomial’ so that R fits a logistic regression model to the dataset:

#fit logistic regression model
model <- glm(default~student+balance+income, family='binomial', data=Default)

#disable scientific notation for model summary
options(scipen=999)

#view model summary
summary(model)

Call:
glm(formula = default ~ student + balance + income, family = "binomial", 
    data = train)

Deviance Residuals: 
    Min       1Q   Median       3Q      Max  
-2.5586  -0.1353  -0.0519  -0.0177   3.7973  

Coefficients:
                 Estimate    Std. Error z value            Pr(>|z|)    
(Intercept) -11.478101194   0.623409555 -18.412 <0.0000000000000002 ***
studentYes   -0.493292438   0.285735949  -1.726              0.0843 .  
balance       0.005988059   0.000293765  20.384 <0.0000000000000002 ***
income        0.000007857   0.000009965   0.788              0.4304    
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Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1

(Dispersion parameter for binomial family taken to be 1)

    Null deviance: 2021.1  on 6963  degrees of freedom
Residual deviance: 1065.4  on 6960  degrees of freedom
AIC: 1073.4

Number of Fisher Scoring iterations: 8

For example, a one unit increase in balance is associated with an average increase of 0.005988 in the log odds of defaulting.

To instead calculate the odds ratio for each predictor variable, we can use the following syntax:

#calculate odds ratio for each predictor variable
exp(coef(model))

  (Intercept)    studentYes       balance        income 
0.00001903854 0.52373166965 1.00575299051 1.00000303345 

We can also calculate each odds ratio along with a 95% confidence interval for each odds ratio:

#calculate odds ratio and 95% confidence interval for each predictor variable 
exp(cbind(Odds_Ratio = coef(model), confint(model)))

               Odds_Ratio          2.5 %       97.5 %
(Intercept) 0.00001903854 0.000007074481 0.0000487808
studentYes  0.52373166965 0.329882707270 0.8334223982
balance     1.00575299051 1.005308940686 1.0062238757
income      1.00000303345 0.999986952969 1.0000191246

The odds ratio for each coefficient represents the average increase in the odds of an individual defaulting, assuming all other predictor variables are held constant.

For example, the predictor variable balance has an odds ratio of 1.0057.

This means for each additional dollar in the balanced carried by an individual, the odds that the individual defaults on their loan increase by a factor of 1.0057, assuming student status and income are held constant.

We can interpret the odds ratios for the other predictor variables in a similar manner.

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in R:

How to Interpret Pr(>|z|) in Logistic Regression Output in R