8. QUA-MED-008 — Mediation, Moderation, Interaction and Conditional Effects

Description:

This Master Prompt would focus on moving beyond simple associations to investigate how, why and under what conditions quantitative relationships occur. It would guide researchers through mediation analysis, indirect effects, moderation analysis, interaction terms, conditional effects, simple-slope analysis, moderated mediation and relevant bootstrap confidence intervals.

Researchers would be guided to distinguish mechanisms from boundary conditions, correctly specify causal assumptions and avoid interpreting statistical mediation as definitive proof of causality when the research design does not support such claims.