age, gender, psychiatric diagnoses of depression and anxiety, and cigarette smoking status in both studies. We used Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling (MSEM) with Bayesian estimation and fixed slope in Mplus 8.0 to test the prospective mediating effect of craving right now on the association between that day stress and prospective next day drinking and drinks consumed. MSEM allows for isolating variations in drinking that are due to a person being exposed to more stress or having greater craving relative to their peers (between-person) from deviations in the person’s own average level of stress or craving (within-person; Figure 1).
