Department of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2010 Apr;98(4):550-8. doi: 10.1037/a0018933.
Psychologists increasingly recommend experimental analysis of mediation. This is a step in the right direction because mediation analyses based on nonexperimental data are likely to be biased and because experiments, in principle, provide a sound basis for causal inference. But even experiments cannot overcome certain threats to inference that arise chiefly or exclusively in the context of mediation analysis-threats that have received little attention in psychology. The authors describe 3 of these threats and suggest ways to improve the exposition and design of mediation tests. Their conclusion is that inference about mediators is far more difficult than previous research suggests and is best tackled by an experimental research program that is specifically designed to address the challenges of mediation analysis.
心理学家越来越多地推荐对中介效应进行实验分析。这是朝正确方向迈出的一步,因为基于非实验数据的中介效应分析很可能存在偏差,而且实验原则上为因果推断提供了合理的基础。但即使是实验也无法克服某些主要或完全出现在中介分析背景下的推理威胁,而这些威胁在心理学中很少受到关注。作者描述了其中的 3 种威胁,并提出了改善中介检验的说明和设计的方法。他们的结论是,对中介变量的推断比之前的研究表明的要困难得多,最好通过专门设计用于应对中介分析挑战的实验研究计划来解决。