Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Paul Jose
PSYC 325
Thought for the day:
You know the world is going crazy when
the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer
is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is
Chinese, the Swiss hold the Americas Cup,
France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, and
Germany doesnt want to go to war.
Chris Rock
Are mediation and moderation cousins?
Similarities:
They both involve three variables;
You can use regression to compute both;
There is no statistics programme (other than ModGraph)
designed to tackle either one.
Differences:
You create a product term in moderation; not in mediation;
You dont have to centre anything in mediation;
Moderation can be used on concurrent data, but mediation
is best used on longitudinal data.
So lets focus on mediation now
Stress Depression
Rumination
The theories
.473***
Stress Depression
.481*** .475***
Rumination
Coefficientsa
Unstandardized Standardized
Coefficients Coefficients
Model B Std. Error Beta t Sig.
1 (Constant) -.560 .031 -17.863 .000
EMUCH 3.117E-02 .001 .476 23.439 .000
2 (Constant) -1.374 .064 -21.467 .000
EMUCH 2.116E-02 .001 .323 14.669 .000
RUMINATE 4.253E-02 .003 .316 14.363 .000
a. Dependent Variable: CDIZ
Different levels of mediation
a
Coefficients
Unstandardized Standardized
Coefficients Coefficients
Model B Std. Error Beta t Sig.
1 (Constant) 19.018 .224 84.744 .000
EMUCH .235 .010 .481 24.659 .000
a. Dependent Variable: RUMINATE
Second regression
a
Coefficients
Unstandardized Standardized
Coefficients Coefficients
Model B Std. Error Beta t Sig.
1 (Constant) .222 .496 .449 .654
EMUCH .164 .011 .323 14.669 .000
RUMINATE .329 .023 .316 14.363 .000
a. Dependent Variable: CDI
Input
.473***
Stress Depression
(.323**)
.481*** .475***
Rumination (.316**)
Rumin.
.16* .65**
Individ- .14*
Extern. .29*
ualism -.23*
Neg.
adjustment
.13*
Collect- .23* Problem-
ivism solving How many
-.20* mediations are
.44** shown here?
Social
support Answer: 4
Why is this better?
Its better insofar as one is considering all of these
variables together.
Whenever one does an associational analysis
(correlation, regression, etc.), one must consider
the third variable problem.
When one does a mediation analysis with three
variables, one should think about whether one has
included all relevant variables.
Inclusion of other variables can wash out (or
intensify) relationships identified with a simple
mediation.
The real world has more than 3 variables in it.
The world of mediation and moderation
The distinctions between these two techniques
should be clearer for you now. For more
information check out my Help Centre. It
presents some clear examples.
Confidence in this area is obtained by doing both
techniques on the same dataset (permissible), and
examining the results.
Keep experimenting and pushing the limits.
And watch for advertisements for ModGraph and
MedGraph!