Risk Factors Associated with Low Infant Birth Weight

Summary: The data on 189 births were collected at Baystate Medical Center, Springfield, Mass. during 1986. The dataset contains an indicator of low infant birth weight as a response and several risk factors associated with low birth weight. The actual birth weight is also included in the dataset.

Data description: The dataset consists of the following 10 variables:

low: indicator of birth weight less than 2.5kg

age: mother's age in years

lwt: mother's weight in pounds at last menstrual period

race: mothers race ("white", "black", "other")

smoke: smoking status during pregnancy

ht: history of hypertension

ui: presence of uterine irritability

ftv: number of physician visits during the first trimester

ptl: number of previous premature labours

bwt: birth weight in grams

Data file: birthweight.data

Sources:
Hosmer, D.W. and Lemeshow, S. (1989) Applied Logistic Regression. New York: Wiley.
Venables, W.N. and Ripley, B.D. (1997) Modern Applied Statistics with S-Plus. New York: Springer.