Illustrations of serial mediation using PROCESS, Mplus and R

Abstract

There has been an increased interest among researchers in the behavorial and social sciences for mediation models. This interest is well deserved: mediation can explain via intermediate variables the relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable. Many software programs are now available to perform such analysis. However, there is a lack of articles to guide users to perform more complex models. The purpose of the current manuscript is to provide a tutorial on serial mediation analysis using software requiring less programming skills like SPSS (PROCESS), and Mplus to more advanced software such as R. In this manuscript, we first introduce the simple mediation analysis. Second, we explain the different parameters and effects of a serial mediation analysis with two mediators. Third, we show how to generate data using R. Fourth, we explain the input and output of PROCESS, Mplus, and R. Finally, a practical example is performed with Mplus.