Multilevel SEM Strategies for Evaluating Mediation in Three-Level Data
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Strategies for modeling mediation effects in multilevel data have proliferated over the past decade, keeping pace with the demands of applied research. Approaches for testing mediation hypotheses with 2-level clustered data were first proposed using multilevel modeling (MLM) and subsequently using multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) to overcome several limitations of MLM. Because 3-level clustered data are becoming increasingly common, it is necessary to develop methods to assess mediation in such data. Whereas MLM easily accommodates 3-level data, MSEM does not. However, it is possible to specify and estimate some 3-level mediation models using both single- and multilevel SEM. Three new alternative approaches are proposed for fitting 3-level mediation models using single- and multilevel SEM, and each method is demonstrated with simulated data. Discussion focuses on the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches as well as directions for future research.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.105 | 0.243 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.012 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.023 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".