forum.smartpls.com

Hello everyone,

I am using SmartPLS to estimate a model comprising 19 candidate success factors. I hypothesize direct effects of the success factors on A, B, C, and D. Besides, there might be moderating effects that I want to examine.

I read about the concept of Baron and Kenny and studied the approach and the excel file available on the SmartPLS homepage / in the Primer book. But I am still wondering about the following points:

1. In my model, there are five indirect paths from a success factor to D. This means, that I need to manually compute the estimates for each path and repeat this approach to determine the indirect effects on C?

2. What is the meaning of the values displayed in the "Total effect" tab of SmartPLS if I have to manually compute the indirect effects?

I would really appreciate your support!

Thank you,
Cari

SmartPLS 3.2.7 gives you all the information you need. You do not need to calculate anything yourself.
You will get the specific indirect effects (that is each indirect path separately, e.g., A->B->C)
You will get the total indirect effect (that is a collection of all indirect effects from A to C; if there is only one path from A to C then this equals the specific indirect effect, if there are multiple pathways then these two differ).
You will get the total effect (that is the total indirect effect plus the direct effect).