Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33346886›Full record

ArticlePsychometrika2021

Social Network Mediation Analysis: A Latent Space Approach.

Haiyan Liu, Ick Hoon Jin, Zhiyong Zhang, Ying Yuan

Abstract read
PubMed Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Psychometrika, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
6citing papers in PubMed
2.1field-weighted citation impact, top 12% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

6 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
  2. Mediation analysis with graph mediator.Biostatistics (Oxford, England) · 2025
    Article
  3. Missing Value Imputation in Relational Data using Variational Inference.Journal of computational and graphical statistics : a joint publication of American Statistical Association, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Interface Foundation of North America · 2025
    Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.

Haiyan LiuPsychological Sciences, University of California, Merced, 5200 N. Lake Road, Merced, CA,  95343, USA. hliu62@ucmerced.edu.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4272-9399
Ick Hoon JinDepartment of Applied Statistics, Department of Statistics and Data Science, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea.
Zhiyong ZhangDepartment of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, USA.
Ying YuanDepartment of Biostatistics, The University of Texas MD, Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center · USUniversity of California, Merced · USUniversity of Notre Dame · USYonsei University · KR

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

A social network comprises both actors and the social connections among them. Such connections reflect the dependence among social actors, which is essential for individuals' mental health and social development. In this article, we propose a mediation model with a social network as a mediator to investigate the potential mediation role of a social network. In the model, the dependence among actors is accounted for by a few mutually orthogonal latent dimensions which form a social space. The individuals' positions in such a latent social space are directly involved in the mediation process between an independent and dependent variable. After showing that all the latent dimensions are equivalent in terms of their relationship to the social network and the meaning of each dimension is arbitrary, we propose to measure the whole mediation effect of a network. Although individuals' positions in the latent space are not unique, we rigorously articulate that the proposed network mediation effect is still well defined. We use a Bayesian estimation method to estimate the model and evaluate its performance through an extensive simulation study under representative conditions. The usefulness of the network mediation model is demonstrated through an application to a college friendship network.

Indexed as

NegotiatingSocial NetworkingBayes TheoremComputer SimulationHumansPsychometricsBayesian estimationfriendship networklatent space modelingmediation analysissmoking behaviorsocial network analysis

Identifiers

PMID33346886
OpenAlexW3116286537

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.