The DOI matches its Crossref record; 31 of the 36 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Do Student Samples Provide an Accurate Estimate of the General Public?
Open accessAbstract
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.
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“A further comment, which is true for much psychology literature (e.g., Hanel & Vione, 2016), is that most of this research depends on student samples, most commonly psychology student samples.”
From Factors Related to Mean Score Group Differences on Cognitive Ability Tests: A Systematic Review (2025) · cites this paper as Hanel & Vione, 2016
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Metadata
- Authors
- Hanel, P. H. P., & Vione, K. C.
- Affiliations
- Cardiff University (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Hanel, Paul H. P.
- ORCID
- Hanel, Paul H. P.
- Venue
- PLOS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2016-12-21
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- e0168354
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5176168
- OpenAlex
- W2569236205
- Cited by
- 510
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 45 · 2025: 48 · 2024: 71 · 2023: 59 · 2022: 56 · 2021: 80 · 2020: 87 · 2019: 40 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 5
- FWCI
- 23.02
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- ORCA Online Research @Cardiff (Cardiff University) (acceptedVersion)
- Open Access at Essex (University of Essex) (acceptedVersion)
- University of Derby Online Research Archive. (University of Derby) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- The University of Bath Online Publications Store (The University of Bath) (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Pure (University of Bath) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Economic and Social Research Council (GB) (ES/J500197/1)
- CAPES Foundation
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Psychometric Methodologies and Testing
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Representations and Identity
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Survey Methodology and Nonresponse
- Keywords
- student samples, cross-cultural comparison, Big Five personality traits, attitudes, embeddedness, intellectual autonomy, sampling bias, replication crisis, cross-national comparison
- MeSH terms
- Attitude, Female, Humans, Male, Personality, Psychological Tests, Students, Knowledge, Young Adult
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