# Multinomial Logistic Regression: small groups

I am implementing a Multinomial Logistic Regression, but I am encountering the possible issue of having very small groups when I create a frequency table of the dependent variable Y and one of the independent variables X (see table). Would this affect my results in a problematic way? Or should I for example just exclude this variable X in my regression (and with that ignore that these 2 variables seem to "correlate" to some extent)?

-------- y0 --- y1

x0: --- 180 ---   2

x1: ---  50 ---   2

x2: --- 300 ---   4

x3: ---  50 --- 350

x4: ---  50 ---  20

• Small sizes are always problematic for inference, as in you will have very low power to detect any significant change, however in terms of doability, as long as it works you can do it. More importantly, why do x0-x2 have such small y1 sizes? – user2974951 Jan 11 at 12:51
• The small y1-sizes are due to the measuring of rare events I would say. Gathering more data is in practice not a option at this point. – Zeven Jan 11 at 13:56
• Try to run the model then and see if there are issues. – user2974951 Jan 11 at 14:13
• One thing you might consider doing if you can't seem to get enough rare events by each of your predictors is to collapse categories of categorical predictors where it makes sense. For example, if you have race as a predictor and you have five race categories like White, Black, Indian, Asian, and Pacific Islander, and too few Pacific Islanders have the rare event, you could consider re-coding race as White vs. Non-white (collapsing Black, Indian, Asian, and Pacific Islander in 1 category) if this made sense in your study and you didn't need to break your estimates out by race. – StatsStudent Jan 11 at 19:35