Tutorial: The practical application of longitudinal structural equation mediation models in clinical trials.

ABSTRACT: The study of mediation of treatment effects, or how treatments work, is important to understanding and improving psychological and behavioral treatments, but applications often focus on mediators and outcomes measured at a single time point. Such cross-sectional analyses do not respect the implied temporal ordering that mediation suggests. Clinical trials of treatments often provide repeated measures of outcomes and, increasingly, of mediators as well. Repeated measurements allow the application of various types of longitudinal structural equation mediation models. These provide flexibility in modeling, including the ability to incorporate some types of measurement error and unmeasured confounding that can strengthen the robustness of findings. The usual approach is to identify the most th

SUBMITTER: Goldsmith KA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5975099 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature