Hey lep11, I don't know if you've checked out my Logistic Regression 2 post, but I am still having difficulties with Logistic Regression. I am going to run you through everything as best I can, and I would really appreciate it if you could explain to me in laymans terms what I have to do.

I've decided which variables I am going to use, I have an exposure variable E=DISLIKE OF SCHOOL and the disease variable D=DRUNKALC. I have other covariates: AGE, SEX, TEACHERS (teachers expect too much of you), RULES (rules are too strict in school), bullied (you have been bullied by another student).

If I run this initial model and find that, say TEACHERS is not significant (by Walds test) I can remove it and get reduced model that better fits my data (correct lep11?).

So... you said:

and since presumably I haven't got rid of all the confounders (for example RULES is a confounder that I haven't been able to get rid of, yet we may assume from the literature that it is a variable that will effect whether a student has drunk alcohol, but since it is not an exposure variable of interest we must control for it - CAN YOU CLARIFY THAT THIS PHILOSOPHY IS CORRECT?) I must do as you suggested and "show that the odds ratio of the risk factor (E) is not altered significantly by the confounder(s)." What do you mean by this? Can you give me an example in terms of the (assumed) confounder RULES and my exposure variable E, because you seem to know what you are talking about but I am not a statistician, so what you say keeps passing over me.

Thanks very much,

L-dawg