Lecture 9: Generalizing Research Results

Question 1

How can you obtain generalizability of research findings?

Answer 1

• representative samples
• sample should be similar enough to the population of interest to draw generalizable conclusions

Question 2

What is generalizable?

Answer 2

results can extend beyond the specific sample or study in which they were obtained

Question 3

What are issues in generalizing beyond the sample?

Answer 3

• what population does the research sample really represent?
• reliance on volunteers
• issues of generalizing across gender identities
• issues of generalizing across cultures, ethnicities, or racial groups

Question 4

Why is the representativeness of the research sample to the population an issue?

Answer 4

• over-reliance on university student and convenience samples
• university samples represent the overall population of university students (higher SES, often limited racial diversity, young age group, higher than average intelligence

Question 5

Why is reliance on volunteers an issue?

Answer 5

• selection bias
• self-selection bias

Question 6

What is selection bias?

Answer 6

those who volunteer to participate may be different from those who choose not to volunteer

Question 7

What is self-selection bias?

Answer 7

those who choose to participate may have more personal interest in the topic, which could influence their behaviour/responses

Question 8

What are the issues of generalizing across gender identities?

Answer 8

• over-representation of females in psychology research
• under-representation of trans and non-binary gender identities

Question 9

What are the issues of generalizing across cultures, ethnicities or racial groups?

Answer 9

• over-reliance on North American culture and White research participants
• improving gradually in recent years

Question 10

What are issues in generalizing beyond the research study?

Answer 10

• do other researchers/research groups obtain similar results?
• do the findings hold outside of a structured, laboratory procedure?

Question 11

What are the issues of other researchers obtaining similar results?

Answer 11

• experimenter characteristics can influence research results (researcher bias)
• generalizability improves as more researchers yield consistent results in a given topic area

Question 12

What are the issues of findings holding outside of a structured, laboratory procedure?

Answer 12

• structured, controlled lab experiments are often designed to measure behaviour that also occurs in real life
• higher internal validity of experiments might mean lower external validity
• field experiments on a similar topic can be conducted to confirm

Question 13

How can you improve generalizability?

Answer 13

replication and meta-analysis

Question 14

What is replication?

Answer 14

conducting another study with the same hypotheses, variables, methods to increase confidence in result

Question 15

What are the two ways of replication?

Answer 15

• direct replication
• conceptual replication

Question 16

What is direct replication?

Answer 16

study is re-conducted using exactly the same measures and procedures as the original

Question 17

What is conceptual replication?

Answer 17

study is re-conducted using same hypothesis and variables, but different measures or procedures

Question 18

What if a research result fails to replicate?

Answer 18

replicate again because there are different results for different samples and if the results are inconsistent then it suggests a limited genralizability

Question 19

What is a meta-analysis?

Answer 19

a statistical technique that analyses the average effect size across a large set of existing research studies on a given topic
- can statistically analyze how well research results generalize across multiple studies