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The fallacy of the ecological fallacy: the potential misuse of a concept and the consequences.
Abstract
Ecological studies have been evaluated in epidemiological contexts in terms of the "ecological fallacy." Although the empirical evidence for a lack of comparability between correlations derived from ecological- and individual-level analyses is compelling, the conceptual meaning of the ecological fallacy remains problematic. This paper argues that issues in cross-level inference can be usefully conceptualized as validity problems, problems not peculiar to ecological-level analyses. Such an approach increases the recognition of both potential inference problems in individual-level studies and the unique contributions of ecological variables. This, in turn, expands the terrain for the location of causes for disease and interventions to improve the public's health.
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Citations
Cites
The Cost of Inequality: Metropolitan Structure and Violent Crime
Blau, J. R., & Blau, P. M. (1982) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2095046 · Cited by 1,500
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Enders, C. K., & Tofighi, D. (2007) · Psychological Methods · doi:10.1037/1082-989x.12.2.121 · Cited by 4,462
Social capital, income inequality, and mortality.
Kawachi, I., Kennedy, B. P., Lochner, K., & Prothrow-Stith, D. (1997) · American Journal of Public Health · doi:10.2105/ajph.87.9.1491 · Cited by 3,212
Younossi, Z. M., Golabi, P., de Avila, L., Paik, J. M., Srishord, M., Fukui, N., Qiu, Y., Burns, L., Afendy, A., & Nader, F. (2019) · Journal of Hepatology · doi:10.1016/j.jhep.2019.06.021 · Cited by 2,235
The disaggregation of within-person and between-person effects in longitudinal models of change
Curran, P. J., & Bauer, D. J. (2011) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.100356 · Cited by 2,056
Social capital and self-rated health: a contextual analysis.
Kawachi, I., Kennedy, B. P., & Glass, R. (1999) · American Journal of Public Health · doi:10.2105/ajph.89.8.1187 · Cited by 1,856
Metadata
- Authors
- Schwartz, S.
- Venue
- American Journal of Public Health
- Publisher
- American Public Health Association
- Published
- 1994-05
- Volume
- 84
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 819-824
- ISSN
- 0090-0036 (ISSN-L)
- 1541-0048
- OpenAlex
- W2072398096
- Cited by
- 777
- References
- 1
- FWCI
- 17.03
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Schwartz, S. (1994). The fallacy of the ecological fallacy: the potential misuse of a concept and the consequences. American Journal of Public Health. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.84.5.819
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
