Mediation analysis is often used to explore the complex relationship between two variables through a third mediating variable. This paper aims to illustrate the performance of the deviance information criterion, the pseudo-Bayes factor, and the Watanabe–Akaike information criterion in selecting the appropriate multilevel mediation model. Our focus will be on comparing the conditional criteria (given random effects) versus the marginal criteria (averaged over random effects) in this respect. Most of the previous work on the multilevel mediation models fails to report the poor behavior of the conditional criteria. We demonstrate here the superiority of the marginal version of the selection criteria over their conditional counterpart in the mediated longitudinal settings through simulation studies and via an application to data from the Longitudinal Aging Study of the Amsterdam study. In addition, we demonstrate the usefulness of our self-written R function for multilevel mediation models.

中文翻译：

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多级中介模型的贝叶斯模型选择

中介分析常用于通过第三个中介变量来探索两个变量之间的复杂关系。本文旨在说明偏差信息准则、伪贝叶斯因子和 Watanabe-Akaike 信息准则在选择适当的多级中介模型时的性能。我们的重点将是在这方面比较条件标准（给定随机效应）与边际标准（平均随机效应）。以前关于多级中介模型的大多数工作都没有报告条件标准的不良行为。我们在这里通过模拟研究和通过应用阿姆斯特丹研究的纵向老化研究的数据证明了选择标准的边缘版本在中介纵向设置中优于条件对应版本。此外，我们展示了我们自己编写的 R 函数对多级中介模型的有用性。