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I want to explore whether attitudes mediate the relationship between employment status and intention to apply to graduate school. (See image below).

I planned to use the Sobel Test to explore the mediation, but I'm not sure I can. How does one/how can one test for mediation with a categorical predictor and both a continuous mediator variable and dependent variable? Prefer answers oriented to SPSS.

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Your diagram is helpful, although I'd like to know for sure what "aggregated 5 item scale" means. $\endgroup$
    – rolando2
    Commented Apr 21, 2014 at 22:12
  • $\begingroup$ The fact that the predictor is categorical is irrelevant. All the standard methods apply. $\endgroup$
    – Noah
    Commented Feb 14, 2018 at 5:31

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To test mediation effect (full or partial), you can you Sobel's test [As it suffers from normality issues for small samples, Bootstrapping is more preferred approach.]

Both can be done in SPSS by using process macro by Andrew F. Hayes. See for more details

After installing process macro in SPSS; follow these steps:

  • Analyze > Regression > Process by Andrew F. Hayes
  • Select DV, IDV and mediating variable; select model number 4; select number of bootstrap samples; and in Options, click on Sobel's test and other required statistics; click

Screenshots of steps: Analyze > Regression > Process by Andrew F. Hayes Select DV, IDV and mediating variable; select **model number 4**; select number of bootstrap samples; and in Options, click on Sobel's test and other required statistics; click

[Select DV, IDV and mediating variable; select **model number 4**; select number of bootstrap samples; and in Options, click on Sobel's test and other required statistics; click

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