Two and three-way moderating effects and plots in regression analysis

Abstract

Distinguished international published papers examine mediator, moderator, moderator-mediator, mediator-moderator variables and indirect effects over the causal relationship in social sciences. Among the possible different ways of data interpretation, understand the moderating effect using linear regression analysis is an alternative. The main objective of this article is to discuss and to clarify theconcept of moderation, when using the multiple regression analysis instead of the traditional general linear models – GLM (e.g., MANOVA, ANCOVA, ANOVA, ANCOVA). The second goal is to apply three estimates: (a) two-way moderating effect with independent continuous variables, (b) two-way moderating effect with a continuous and a dummy variable as independent variables and (c) three-waymoderating effect with independent continuous variables, all using regression analysis. Third, the paper discusses the ordinal moderation and cross-over effects.The results showed that three-way interactions demand group analysis and were not used.