The issue of sanpling bias has been raised by Mike Palij and Jim Clark in recent posts. And I have been doing some thinking about that.It seems to be that the sampling bias accusation comes up when the results of the research are construed to be applicable to poulation parameters not represented in the experimental subject pool. I have no dispute if a researcher states that the results were obtained from a particular group of subjects abd some caution should be exercised in generalizing to other groups. There is nothing wrong in stating that the data were collected from whites and may be applicable only to whites or the data were obtained from certain parameters and should only be interpreted within those groups with similar parameters. I think that the main issue has been the assumption that researh results obtained from white subjects are applicable to other groups.Now maybe it can if we assume some presumed equivalence in behavioral and other parameters to warrant generalization. It is often mentioned that the famous study that aspirin could ward off a heart attack did not include one woman.It was an all male study.Is this sampling bias? It depends on how one looks at it. There is nothing wrong with an all male or all white study.We should just conclude that the results may not generalize to other groups.As a matter of fact there should be disclaimers about generalizing to other groups or other situations-like notices on herbal supplements as required by the FDA. The Eurocentric paradigm is probably best applicable to those societies where Eurocentrism is the modus operandi and philosophy in the political,social,and cultural imperatives of that society.Unfortunately it has achieved a dominant place in U.S society (so far) and has dictated the norms for virtually all aspects of social as well as cognitive values. This is what I mean by the label of Eurocentric Cognitive Imperialism and the Eurocentric consensus. Maybe it would behove Psychology to go the way of cultural anthropology- looking for general principles but becoming aware aware of the differential and unique characteristics of those principles in other subject pools. I still like the Spearman G.
Michael (omnicentric) Sylvester,PhD Daytona Beach,Florida --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)