Happy new year! We hope you’ll enjoy our first #EvalTuesdayTip of 2025.
A recent post on the American Evaluation Association (AEA) blog, which offers a tip a day by and for evaluators, explains the concepts of mediation and moderation and offers tips on how to use these complex statistical methods in program evaluation.
Mediation, explains the post by evaluator Antonio Olmos, “occurs when a variable (called a mediator) explains the relationship between treatment and outcome”. Moderation, on the other hand, “affects the strength or direction of the treatment-outcome relationship”.
The post includes clear, useful tips for mediation and moderation, including “use simple diagrams” for communicating these complex ideas and “interpret with caution”, as mediation and moderation don’t necessarily establish causality. Learn more in the full post.