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Hi everyone, actually I'm, a marketing student conducting research for my master's thesis, my research requires the presence of serial multiple mediators, and I tried to apply the approach used in "Mediation Analyses in Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling. Guidelines and Empirical Examples" of Nitzl et al(2018) . however, I still don't get the point of using a spreadsheet on Excel to calculate manually, the indirect effects while it can be done through Pls directly and almost it's the same results in IC, is it an old approach that was used before Pls gets updated? Ps( im using the latest version of Smart Pls)

Thank you ^_^
Kind Regards

Yes. SmartPLS includes the specific indirect effects (that you should calculate in Excel according to the paper) since 2018. So their recommendation is outdated.

Hi, i am new to SmartPLS, and using mediation in my analysis. Before running the mediation, is it necessary that in simple model analysis all the results of IVs should be significant?

No. Usually that is not a requirement anymore. It has often been stated as a requirement in the times of Baron and Kenny, but nowadays researchers have acknowledged that there can be meaningful mediation even without the total effect (the direct effect in the simple model without mediation being significant). See also the reference on our resource page on mediation: https://www.smartpls.com/documentation/ ... /mediation especially the paper by Zhao, Lynch, and Chen (2010).

thank you a lot for the answer ^_^

Hi everyone,

What is your opinion (conclusion) on following mediation analysis:

Direct Effect: X -> Y B:-0.182 (negative), p=0.287 (insignificant)
Total Indirect: X -> Y total indirect effect B:0.164, p=0.047 (significant)
Specific Indirect:
X -> M1 -> Y B:0.044, p=0.274 (insignificant)
X -> M2 -> Y B:0.065, p=0.484 (insignificant)
X -> M1 --> M2 -> Y B:0.055, p=0.202 (insignificant)

Since the total indirect effect is significant and the direct effect is insignificant the conclusion should be FULL MEDIATION, however there is no specific indirect path that significant. Opinion? Please not the B of the direct effect is negative

Thank you,
Paulina Lo

Please see my response to your other post