mediation
In a previous post we demonstrated how to perform a basic mediation analysis. In this post we look at performing a moderated mediation analysis. The basic idea is that a mediator may depend on another variable called a "moderator". For example, in our mediation analysis post we hypothesized that self-esteem was a mediator of student grades on the effect of student happiness. We illustrate this below with a path diagram.
Let’s say previous studies have suggested that higher grades predict higher happiness: X (grades) → Y (happiness). (This research example is made up for illustration purposes. Please don’t consider it a scientific statement.)
