Agler Robert, De Boeck Paul
Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States.
Division of Epidemiology, College of Public Health, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States.
Front Psychol. 2017 Nov 15;8:1984. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01984. eCollection 2017.
Mediation analysis has become a very popular approach in psychology, and it is one that is associated with multiple perspectives that are often at odds, often implicitly. Explicitly discussing these perspectives and their motivations, advantages, and disadvantages can help to provide clarity to conversations and research regarding the use and refinement of mediation models. We discuss five such pairs of perspectives on mediation analysis, their associated advantages and disadvantages, and their implications: with vs. without a mediation hypothesis, specific effects vs. a global model, directness vs. indirectness of causation, effect size vs. null hypothesis testing, and hypothesized vs. alternative explanations. Discussion of the perspectives is facilitated by a small simulation study. Some philosophical and linguistic considerations are briefly discussed, as well as some other perspectives we do not develop here.
中介分析在心理学领域已成为一种非常流行的方法，它与多种往往相互矛盾的观点相关联，而且这些矛盾常常是隐性的。明确讨论这些观点及其动机、优点和缺点，有助于在关于中介模型的使用和完善的讨论及研究中提供清晰的思路。我们讨论了关于中介分析的五对这样的观点、它们相关的优缺点及其影响：有中介假设与无中介假设、特定效应与全局模型、因果关系的直接性与间接性、效应大小与零假设检验，以及假设性解释与替代性解释。通过一项小型模拟研究来促进对这些观点的讨论。还简要讨论了一些哲学和语言方面的考量，以及一些我们在此未展开论述的其他观点。
