مقایسهٔ روش‌ها

	تحلیل میانجی‌گری سببی (اثرات مستقیم و غیرمستقیم طبیعی)	تحلیل فرایند شرطی (میانجیگری تعدیل‌شده)	تحلیل میانجیگری
حوزه	استنتاج علّی	استنتاج علّی	آمار
خانواده	Regression model	Regression model	Hypothesis test
سال پیدایش	2010	2018	1986
پدیدآور	Pearl (2001); general framework by Imai, Keele & Tingley (2010)	Andrew F. Hayes (PROCESS framework); Preacher, Rucker & Hayes (moderated mediation)	Baron & Kenny
نوع	Counterfactual causal decomposition	Regression-based conditional process model	Indirect effects / path test
منبع بنیادین	Pearl, J. (2001). Direct and Indirect Effects. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), 411-420.	Hayes, A. F. (2018). Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis: A Regression-Based Approach (2nd ed.). The Guilford Press. ISBN: 978-1462534654	Baron, R. M. & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(6), 1173–1182.
نام‌های دیگر	natural direct effect, natural indirect effect, NDE / NIE decomposition, counterfactual mediation	moderated mediation, moderated mediation analysis, PROCESS model, Hayes PROCESS conditional process model	indirect effects analysis, path-based mediation, PROCESS macro mediation, Aracılık Analizi (Mediation / PROCESS)
مرتبط	5	5	5
خلاصه	Causal mediation analysis is a counterfactual framework that splits a treatment's total effect into a Natural Direct Effect (NDE) and a Natural Indirect Effect (NIE) that runs through a mediator. The modern general approach was formalised by Pearl (2001) and Imai, Keele and Tingley (2010), giving the decomposition a precise causal interpretation.	Conditional process analysis is Andrew F. Hayes's regression-based PROCESS framework (2018) that combines mediation and moderation in a single model, testing how an indirect effect changes across levels of a moderator. It quantifies conditional indirect and conditional direct effects and tests them with bootstrap confidence intervals.	Mediation analysis is a statistical procedure that tests whether the effect of an independent variable X on an outcome Y operates wholly or partly through a third variable M, called the mediator. Formalised by Baron and Kenny in 1986, it decomposes the total effect of X on Y into a direct path (c′) and an indirect path (a × b), quantifying how much of the relationship is carried by the mediating mechanism.