The semipartial correlation needs no correction. Comment on Park and Yi (2025).

Authors

Peter de Heus

Published in

Psychological methods. Volume 31. Issue 5. Pages 1280-1285.

Abstract

In a recent article in this journal, Park and Yi (see record 2026-37646-001) try to remedy the perceived problem that R²_med, a measure of effect size in mediation analysis, is usually nonzero when the second part of the indirect effect (b) is zero. They do this by redefining the semipartial correlation for the independent variable as equal to its zero-order correlation when b is zero. Against this, I argue that the perceived problem is just a fact, the supposed proof that R²_med must be zero is false, and the proposed solution creates many new problems, so it should be rejected. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

PMID:
42895497
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 19 Oct 2026.

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