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Journal article
Lack of group-to-individual generalizabilityis a threat to human subjects research
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, v 115(27), pp E6106-E6115
03 Jul 2018
PMID: 29915059
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
Only for ergodic processes will inferences based on group-level data generalize to individual experience or behavior. Because human social and psychological processes typically have an individually variable and time-varying nature, they are unlikely to be ergodic. In this paper, six studies with a repeated-measure design were used for symmetric comparisons of interindividual and intraindividual variation. Our results delineate the potential scope and impact of nonergodic data in human subjects research. Analyses across six samples (with 87-94 participants and an equal number of assessments per participant) showed some degree of agreement in central tendency estimates (mean) between groups and individuals across constructs and data collection paradigms. However, the variance around the expected value was two to four times larger within individuals than within groups. This suggests that literatures in social and medical sciences may overestimate the accuracy of aggregated statistical estimates. This observation could have serious consequences for how we understand the consistency between group and individual correlations, and the generalizability of conclusions between domains. Researchers should explicitly test for equivalence of processes at the individual and group level across the social and medical sciences.
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Details
- Title
- Lack of group-to-individual generalizabilityis a threat to human subjects research
- Creators
- Aaron J. Fisher - University of California, BerkeleyJohn D. Medaglia - Drexel UniversityBertus F. Jeronimus - University of Groningen
- Publication Details
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, v 115(27), pp E6106-E6115
- Publisher
- Natl Acad Sciences
- Number of pages
- 10
- Grant note
- 1-DP5- OD021352 / National Institute of Mental Health at the National Institutes of Health; United States Department of Health & Human Services; National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA; NIH National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) DP5OD021352 / OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH; United States Department of Health & Human Services; National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences (Psychology)
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000437107000005
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85049381357
- Other Identifier
- 991019169464704721
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Psychology, Clinical