The persistent sampling bias in developmental psychology: A call to action

Abstract

Psychology must confront the bias in its broad literature toward the study of participants developing in environments unrepresentative of the vast majority of the world's population. Here, we focus on the implications of addressing this challenge, highlight the need to address overreliance on a narrow participant pool, and emphasize the value and necessity of conducting research with diverse populations. We show that high-impact-factor developmental journals are heavily skewed toward publishing articles with data from WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) populations. Most critically, despite calls for change and supposed widespread awareness of this problem, there is a habitual dependence on convenience sampling and little evidence that the discipline is making any meaningful movement toward drawing from diverse samples. Failure to confront the possibility that culturally specific findings are being misattributed as universal traits has broad implications for the construction of scientifically defensible theories and for the reliable public dissemination of study findings.

Cumulative cultural learning: Development and diversity

“…A comprehensive account of teaching and imitation requires systematic study of cultural variation and continuity in childrearing practices (151). Variable socialization strategies support different culturally specific childrearing goals.…”

Individual Differences in Language Acquisition and Processing

“…Thus, it is important to acknowledge that much of the work on SES and language acquisition has been conducted in North America, which limits the generalizability of the findings [68]. Crosscultural pushed the girl .…”

Invisibility of Racial/Ethnic Minorities in Developmental Science: Implications for Research and Institutional Practices

“…In their review of articles published in APA and APS journals between 1993-1999, Nagayama Hall and Maramba (2001 found that only 6% of articles were focused on racial/ethnic minorities, and only 3% of articles in Developmental Psychology, arguably the leading APA journal focused on developmental science. Hartmann et al (2013) Nielsen, Haun, Kärtner, and Legare (2017) 2 found that 14% of articles included samples that were predominantly racial/ethnic minority, and a surprisingly high 28% did not mention the racial/ethnic composition at all. Taken together, these analyses document the invisibility of racial/ethnic minority samples in developmental research, and show no signs of major change over time.…”

“…Examinations of the samples included in research across psychology bears this out, overwhelmingly comprising White, American, middle-class 3 samples (Arnett, 2003;Graham, 1992;Hall & Maramba, 2001;Hartmann, et al, 2013;Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010;Nielsen et al, 2017). The result is a theoretical and empirical base that reflects a very small percentage of the world's population.…”