Predicting the type of pregnancy using artificial neural networks and multinomial logistic regression: a comparison study
Some medical and epidemiological surveys have been designed to predict a nominal response variable with several levels. With regard to the type of pregnancy there are four possible states: wanted, unwanted by wife, unwanted by husband and unwanted by couple. In this paper, we have predicted the type of pregnancy, as well as the factors influencing it using two different models and comparing them. Regarding the type of pregnancy with several levels, we developed a multinomial logistic regression and a neural network based on the data and compared their results using three statistical indices: sensitivity, specificity and kappa coefficient. Based on these three indices, neural network proved to be a better fit for prediction on data in comparison to multinomial logistic regression. When the relations among variables are complex, one can use neural networks instead of multinomial logistic regression to predict the nominal response variables with several levels in order to gain more accurate predictions.
prediction type of pregnancy neural networks multinomial logistic regression