Social Network Mediation Analysis: A Latent Space Approach

Haiyan Liu (), Ick Hoon Jin, Zhiyong Zhang and Ying Yuan
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Haiyan Liu: University of California, Merced
Ick Hoon Jin: Yonsei University
Zhiyong Zhang: University of Notre Dame
Ying Yuan: The University of Texas MD, Anderson Cancer Center

Psychometrika, 2021, vol. 86, issue 1, No 10, 272-298

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: friendship network; mediation analysis; social network analysis; latent space modeling; Bayesian estimation; smoking behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11336-020-09736-z

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