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Understanding and Managing Sampling Issues in Research with Children

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Handbook of Research in Pediatric and Clinical Child Psychology

Part of the book series: Issues in Clinical Child Psychology ((ICCP))

Abstract

Pediatric and clinical child psychologists often conduct research with heterogeneous clinical populations (e.g., children and adolescents with behavior disorders or chronic health conditions) that raise difficult sampling problems. Children and adolescents may be recruited from highly specialized populations and settings, for example, hospitals, that can result in biased samples (Berkson, 1946). Recruiting clinical populations can result in sample self-selection (Betan, Roberts, & McClusky-Fawcett, 1995) and attrition (Aylward, Hatcher, Stripp, Gustafson, & Leavitt, 1985), which may seriously limit generalizability of findings. Finally, in order to reduce heterogeneity of sample characteristics and carefully target their samples, investigators often restrict eligibility criteria, which also limits generalizability.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pediatrics, Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, Cleveland, Ohio, USA, 44106-6038

    Dennis Drotar

  2. Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA, 44106-7123

    Kristin A. Riekert

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  1. Dennis Drotar
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  2. Kristin A. Riekert
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital and Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA

    Dennis Drotar

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© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Drotar, D., Riekert, K.A. (2000). Understanding and Managing Sampling Issues in Research with Children. In: Drotar, D. (eds) Handbook of Research in Pediatric and Clinical Child Psychology. Issues in Clinical Child Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4165-3_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4165-3_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-6869-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-4165-3

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