Assessing 2–2–1 Mediation with Plausible Values: Comparisons of Multilevel Mediation Modeling Methods and Confidence Intervals

A 2–2–1 mediation design with plausible values is common in large-scale assessments. This simulation study examined the efficacy to estimate indirect effects of multilevel SEM, two-step analysis, and aggregation method under various conditions, along with three CI construction methods—delta, distribution of the product, and Monte Carlo.