TY - JOUR
T1 - Do Student Samples Provide an Accurate Estimate of the General Public?
AU - Hanel, Paul
AU - Vione, Katia C.
PY - 2016/12/16
Y1 - 2016/12/16
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0168354
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0168354
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0168354
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0168354
M3 - Article
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 11
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 12
M1 - e0168354
ER -