I would like to test if one variable (M) exerts a mediator role in the relationship between another variable (A) and the dependent variable (Y). Does anyone know if there is a particular way to test this? Do you know any good reference to give to my students? I have seen some tests in the internet, but the references do not look professional enough to share them with my students.
Hi Raquel,
If you want to test mediation effects the best way to do this is via Structural Equation Modelling (SEM).
Stata (13) has routines for implementing it but there are a lot of other specialised softwares that have been on the market for a long time.
A very good (but technical) paper is by Muthen (2011) on causal mediation.
Here is the link: http://www.statmodel2.com/download/causalmediation.pdf
I am currently working on a paper with mediation effects so if you need anything else on this I will be happy to help you.
Best
Areti
Hi Raquel,
If you're just interested in simple mediation, then I would recommend a regression based approach. Kristopher Preacher have a very good website with a number of tools (http://quantpsy.org/medn.htm) and Andrew Hayes has developed a number of different macros and published a recent text (Hayes, A. F. (2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. New York: Guilford Press.) on mediation approaches.
Other references that you could look at/provide to your students could include:
Hayes, A. F. (2009). Beyond Baron and Kenny: Statistical mediation analysis in the new millennium. Communication Monographs, 76, 408-420. doi: 10.1080/03637750903310360
MacKinnon, D. P., Krull, J. L., & Lockwood, C. M. (2000). Equivalence of the mediation, confounding and suppression effect. Prevention Science, 1, 173-181.
MacKinnon, D. P., Lockwood, C. M., Hoffman, J. M., West, S. G., & Sheets, V. (2002). A comparison of methods to test mediation and other intervening variable effects. Psychological Methods, 7, 83-104.
Preacher, K. J., & Hayes, A. F. (2004). SPSS and SAS procedures for estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers, 36, 717-731.
Shrout, P. E., & Bolger, N. (2002). Mediation in experimental and nonexperimental studies: New procedures and recommendations. Psychological Methods, 7, 422-445.
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