Do student samples provide an accurate estimate of the general public?
Journal article
Authors | Hanel, Paul H. P. and C. Vione, Katia |
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Abstract | Most psychological studies rely on student samples. Students are usually considered as more homogenous than representative samples both within and across countries. However, little is known about the nature of the differences between student and representative samples. This is an important gap, also because knowledge about the degree of difference between student and representative samples may allow to infer from the former to the latter group. Across 59 countries and 12 personality (Big-5) and attitudinal variables we found that differences between students and general public were partly substantial, incoherent, and contradicted previous findings. Two often used cultural variables, embeddedness and intellectual autonomy, failed to explain the differences between both groups across countries. We further found that students vary as much as the general population both between and within countries. In summary, our results indicate that generalizing from students to the general public can be problematic when personal and attitudinal variables are used, as students vary mostly randomly from the general public. Findings are also discussed in terms of the replication crisis within psychology. |
Keywords | Students; General public; Higher education; Surveys |
Year | 2016 |
Journal | PLos ONE |
Publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
ISSN | 1932-6203 |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0168354 |
Web address (URL) | https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0168354 |
http://hdl.handle.net/10545/622446 | |
hdl:10545/622446 | |
Output status | Published |
Publication dates | 21 Dec 2016 |
Publication process dates | |
Accepted | 30 Nov 2016 |
Deposited | 23 Mar 2018 |
Rights | Archived with thanks to PLOS ONE |
Contributors | Cardiff University |
File | File Access Level Open |
File | File Access Level Open |
https://repository.derby.ac.uk/item/92zyw/do-student-samples-provide-an-accurate-estimate-of-the-general-public
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