The DOI matches its Crossref record; 19 of the 19 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Bias in Cross-Sectional Analyses of Longitudinal Mediation: Partial and Complete Mediation Under an Autoregressive Model
Open accessAbstract
Maxwell and Cole (2007) showed that cross-sectional approaches to mediation typically generate substantially biased estimates of longitudinal parameters in the special case of complete mediation. However, their results did not apply to the more typical case of partial mediation. We extend their previous work by showing that substantial bias can also occur with partial mediation. In particular, cross-sectional analyses can imply the existence of a substantial indirect effect even when the true longitudinal indirect effect is zero. Thus, a variable that is found to be a strong mediator in a cross-sectional analysis may not be a mediator at all in a longitudinal analysis. In addition, we show that very different combinations of longitudinal parameter values can lead to essentially identical cross-sectional correlations, raising serious questions about the interpretability of cross-sectional mediation data. More generally, researchers are encouraged to consider a wide variety of possible mediation models beyond simple cross-sectional models, including but not restricted to autoregressive models of change.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.51.6.1173 · Cited by 91,532
Preacher, K. J., & Hayes, A. F. (2008) · Behavior Research Methods · doi:10.3758/brm.40.3.879 · Cited by 34,117
SPSS and SAS procedures for estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models
Preacher, K. J., & Hayes, A. F. (2004) · Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers · doi:10.3758/bf03206553 · Cited by 17,383
Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference
Pearl, J. (2009) · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511803161 · Cited by 11,653
Mediation in experimental and nonexperimental studies: New procedures and recommendations.
Shrout, P. E., & Bolger, N. (2002) · Psychological Methods · doi:10.1037/1082-989x.7.4.422 · Cited by 11,335
Estimating causal effects of treatments in randomized and nonrandomized studies
Rubin, D. B. (1974) · Journal of Educational Psychology · doi:10.1037/h0037350 · Cited by 9,436
A comparison of methods to test mediation and other intervening variable effects
MacKinnon, D. P., Lockwood, C. M., Hoffman, J. M., West, S. G., & Sheets, V. (2002) · Psychological Methods · doi:10.1037/1082-989x.7.1.83 · Cited by 9,406
MacKinnon, D. P., Fairchild, A. J., & Fritz, M. S. (2007) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.58.110405.085542 · Cited by 5,688
Introduction to Statistical Mediation Analysis
MacKinnon, D. P. (2012) · doi:10.4324/9780203809556 · Cited by 5,618
A general approach to causal mediation analysis.
Imai, K., Keele, L., & Tingley, D. (2010) · Psychological Methods · doi:10.1037/a0020761 · Cited by 4,143
Cited by
An index and test of linear moderated mediation
Hayes, A. F. (2015) · Multivariate Behavioral Research · doi:10.1080/00273171.2014.962683 · Cited by 3,979
Exploring pathways linking greenspace to health: theoretical and methodological guidance
Markevych, I., Schoierer, J., Hartig, T., Chudnovsky, A., Hystad, P., Dzhambov, A. M., de Vries, S., Triguero-Mas, M., Brauer, M., Nieuwenhuijsen, M. J., et al. (2017) · Environmental Research · doi:10.1016/j.envres.2017.06.028 · Cited by 2,543
Mendelian randomisation for mediation analysis: current methods and challenges for implementation
Carter, A. R., Sanderson, E., Hammerton, G., Richmond, R. C., Davey Smith, G., Heron, J., Taylor, A. E., Davies, N. M., & Howe, L. D. (2021) · European Journal of Epidemiology · doi:10.1007/s10654-021-00757-1 · Cited by 1,215
Gil de Zúñiga, H., Weeks, B., & Ardèvol-Abreu, A. (2017) · Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication · doi:10.1111/jcc4.12185 · Cited by 594
Cross-Sectional Analysis of Longitudinal Mediation Processes
O'Laughlin, K. D., Martin, M. J., & Ferrer, E. (2018) · Multivariate Behavioral Research · doi:10.1080/00273171.2018.1454822 · Cited by 475
Metadata
- Authors
- Maxwell, S. E., Cole, D. A., & Mitchell, M. A.
- Venue
- Multivariate Behavioral Research
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2011-09-30
- Volume
- 46
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 816-841
- ISSN
- 0027-3171 (ISSN-L)
- 1532-7906
- OpenAlex
- W2119963803
- Cited by
- 1,338
- References
- 19
- FWCI
- 16.69
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Bias in Cross-Sectional Analyses of Longitudinal Mediation: Partial and Complete Mediation Under an Autoregressive Model. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1080/00273171.2011.606716
- The paper
- Maxwell, S. E., Cole, D. A., & Mitchell, M. A. (2011). Bias in Cross-Sectional Analyses of Longitudinal Mediation: Partial and Complete Mediation Under an Autoregressive Model. Multivariate Behavioral Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/00273171.2011.606716
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.