Using SAS Macros for Multiple Mediation Analysis in R

Mediation analysis refers to the process of making inferences on effects of third variables that intervene in the relationship between an exposure and response variable. The relationships among variables can be modelled by generalized linear models (GLM). However, GLM are not sufficient to describe relationships among variables when there are nonlinear relationships and potential interaction effects. A general mediation analysis method was developed using not only GLMs, but also multiple additive regression trees and smoothing splines by Yu and Li (2017). The method is implemented in the R package, mma. In this paper, we developed SAS macros so that functions in the mma package can be called and the mediation analysis performed in the SAS environment.