Mediator Variable
A mediator variable (or mediating variable, or intervening variable) in statistics is a variable that describes how rather than when effects will occur by accounting for the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. A mediating relationship is one in which the path relating A to C is mediated by a third variable (B).
For example, a mediating variable explains the actual relationship between the following variables. Most people will agree that older drivers (up to a certain point), are better drivers. Thus:
- Aging Better driving
But what is missing from this relationship is a mediating variable that is actually causing the improvement in driving: experience. The mediated relationship would look like the following:
- Aging Increased experience driving a car Better driving
Mediating variables are often contrasted with moderating variables, which pinpoint the conditions under which an independent variable exerts its effects on a dependent variable.
Read more about this topic: Mediation (statistics)
Famous quotes containing the words mediator and/or variable:
“Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance; if their sins were as scarlet, they are now white as snow: they have been washed in the blood of the mediator and the redeemer, Time.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“Walked forth to ease my pain
Along the shore of silver streaming Thames,
Whose rutty bank, the which his river hems,
Was painted all with variable flowers,”
—Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)