In my investigation about the determinants of subjective well being (life satisfaction) I have some variables that measure the access to food and also other variables that measure the affections (if, in the last week, the interviewed felt sad/happy, for example). These variables don't show high levels of simple Pearson correlations nor high levels of VIF. In experimenting with different models (including and excluding some variables), I see that access to food has a positive and significant coefficient, except in the ones that the affective varaibles are included. Can I make the case that this is due to the fact that affective variables are mediating the effect of access to food to life satisfaction? I also tried a with an interaction between access to food and affective variables but they are not significant.
See link below to make sure that the effect does not come from (i) confounding or (ii) moderating factor. Mediator is non-observable. You describe factor that are readily identifiable in you groups of variables---this sounds like identifiable independent variable pointing to moderation instead. Double check, see link below.
LINK:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediation_(statistics)
You are confused. Variables are NOT significant their coeffs may be. You can tell nothing by the change in a p-value about your variables. Regards, D. Booth
Thank you Paul!
And yes, David. What can you say about the question if you re-read it changing the word variable with "coefficient of the variable"?
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