Mediating effects of depressive symptoms on social support and quality of life among rural older Chinese

Table 3 Depressive symptoms mediate the relationship between social support and QOL, with age, gender, educational level, marital status, and economic satisfactory as covariates (N = 420)

	Path a	Path b	Path c	Path c’	Indirect effect	Standardized indirect effect	P_M	R²_med
Mediation analysis 1: MOS-SSS
β	−0.0569	− 0.3741	0.2232	0.2019	0.0213	0.0427	0.0954	0.0479
LLCI	−0.0912	−0.4926	0.1797	0.1597	0.0071	0.0145	0.0308	0.0188
ULCI	−0.0226	−0.2555	0.2667	0.2441	0.0421	0.0816	0.1934	0.0879
Mediation analysis 2: Emotional/informational support
β	−0.1313	−0.4086	0.6778	0.6241	0.0536	0.0317	0.0791	0.0351
LLCI	−0.2483	−0.5283	0.5265	0.4796	0.0059	0.0032	0.0094	0.0106
ULCI	−0.0142	−0.2888	0.8290	0.7687	0.1154	0.0663	0.1713	0.0684
Mediation analysis 3: Tangible support
β	−0.1095	−0.4098	0.3690	0.3241	0.0449	0.0399	0.1216	0.0336
LLCI	−0.1871	−0.5341	0.2652	0.2243	0.0105	0.0095	0.0095	0.0124
ULCI	−0.0319	−0.2855	0.4728	0.4240	0.0919	0.0783	0.0783	0.0661
Mediation analysis 4: Positive social interaction
β	−0.2191	−0.3921	0.8409	0.7549	0.0859	0.0406	0.1022	0.0388
LLCI	−0.3648	−0.5131	0.6515	0.5723	0.0245	0.0123	0.0292	0.0129
ULCI	−0.0735	−0.2711	1.0302	0.9376	0.1721	0.0799	0.2134	0.0768
Mediation analysis 5: Affection support
β	−0.2933	−0.3705	1.1202	1.0115	0.1081	0.0437	0.0970	0.0482
LLCI	−0.4639	−0.489	0.9037	0.8013	0.0403	0.0163	0.0356	0.0195
ULCI	−0.1227	−0.2519	1.3367	1.2218	0.2080	0.0809	0.1898	0.0876

Notes. There are four mediation analyses in the table, different in social support scores. Mediation analysis 1 uses the total score of social support, while other mediation analyses use dimension scores of MOS-SSS respectively. P_M Percent mediation, R²_med R-squared mediation. LL low limit, CI confidence interval, UL upper limit

ISSN: 1477-7525