A kitchen sink regression is an informal and usually pejorative term for a regression analysis

Regression analysis

In statistics, regression analysis includes many techniques for modeling and analyzing several variables, when the focus is on the relationship between a dependent variable and one or more independent variables...

 which uses a long list of possible independent variable

Independent variable

The terms "dependent variable" and "independent variable" are used in similar but subtly different ways in mathematics and statistics as part of the standard terminology in those subjects...

s to attempt to explain variance in a dependent variable. In economics

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

, psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

, and other social sciences

Social sciences

Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...

, regression analysis is typically used deductively

Deductive reasoning

Deductive reasoning, also called deductive logic, is reasoning which constructs or evaluates deductive arguments. Deductive arguments are attempts to show that a conclusion necessarily follows from a set of premises or hypothesis...

 to test hypotheses, but a kitchen sink regression does not follow this norm. Instead, the analyst throws "everything and the kitchen sink" into the regression in hopes of finding some interesting statistical pattern. The results of this type of regression may be interpreted inductively to suggest that the same pattern of relationships between independent and dependent variables will be found in other data, which can lead to hasty generalization

Hasty generalization

Hasty generalization is a logical fallacy of faulty generalization by reaching an inductive generalization based on insufficient evidence essentially making a hasty conclusion without considering all of the variables...

s.

The kitchen sink regression is an example of the practice of data dredging

Data dredging

Data dredging is the inappropriate use of data mining to uncover misleading relationships in data. Data-snooping bias is a form of statistical bias that arises from this misuse of statistics...

.