Does activity level mediate or suppress the association between fear of falling and falls?

摘要

In Wijlhuizen et al.'s (2007) paper the authors present their findings that fear of falling is not a significant zero order predictor of number of falls in their sample, but is significant after controlling for level of activity. Their conclusion is that activity level mediates the association between fear of falling and rate of falls. However, this conclusion is not consistent with the usual understanding of mediation, and we believe may be considerably misleading if presented in this way.