{"doi":"10.1037/tra0001421","title":"A brief primer on conducting regression-based causal mediation analysis.","abstract":"OBJECTIVE: . METHOD: , we use data from a published longitudinal study to assess the extent to which children's externalizing behavior mediates changes in parental negative feelings during the COVID-19 lockdown. We compare the results to those obtained using traditional methods, thus illustrating the importance of accounting for exposure-mediator interaction when an interaction may be present. RESULTS: When the exposure and the mediator interact, traditional methods can provide estimates of direct and indirect effects that differ from those provided by more flexible causal mediation methods. When the exposure and the mediator do not interact, traditional methods and causal mediation method may estimate similar direct and indirect effects depending on the model specification. CONCLUSIONS: In contrast to traditional methods of mediation analysis, regression-based causal mediation methods seek to estimate specific interventional quantities, not mere associations, and the causal methods explicitly allow for exposure-mediator interactions. We recommend using these methods by default rather than using more restrictive traditional methods. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).","journal":"Psychological Trauma Theory Research Practice and Policy","year":2023,"id":319194,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":57,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9162,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":388934,"name":"Kazuki Yoshida","orcid":"0000-0002-2030-3549","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":377143,"name":"Jay S. Kaufman","orcid":"0000-0003-1606-401X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":32607,"name":"Maya B. Mathur","orcid":"0000-0001-6698-2607","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":785843,"name":"Yi Li","orcid":"0000-0002-9359-210X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":33,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:07:12.004111Z","pmid":"36701540","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}