Division of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Environmental Health, School of Public Health, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2024 Sep 18;19(9):e0310429. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0310429. eCollection 2024.
Mediation analysis is commonly implemented in psychological, epidemiological, and social behavior studies to identify potential factors that mediate associations between exposures and physical or psychological outcomes. Various analytical tools are available to perform mediation analyses, among which Mplus is widely used due to its user-friendly interface. In practice, sumptuous results provided by Mplus, such as the estimated standardized and unstandardized effect sizes, can be difficult for researchers to choose to match their studies. Through a comprehensive review and utilizing findings from a proven study, we proposed guidelines and recommendations to help users select between standardized or unstandardized results based on data attributes and users' hypotheses. We also provided guidelines to choose from several types of standardized values based on the types of variables, including exposures, mediators, and outcomes.
中介分析通常在心理学、流行病学和社会行为研究中实施，以确定暴露与身体或心理结果之间关联的潜在因素。有各种分析工具可用于进行中介分析，其中 Mplus 由于其用户友好的界面而被广泛使用。在实践中，Mplus 提供的丰富结果，例如估计的标准化和非标准化效应大小，可能使研究人员难以选择与他们的研究相匹配的结果。通过全面审查并利用经过验证的研究结果，我们提出了指南和建议，以帮助用户根据数据属性和用户假设在标准化或非标准化结果之间进行选择。我们还根据变量类型（包括暴露、中介和结果）提供了从几种标准化值中进行选择的指南。
