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Generalizability: beyond plausibility and handwaving
Author(s) -
Shahar MD MPH Eyal
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal of evaluation in clinical practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.737
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1365-2753
pISSN - 1356-1294
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2753.2003.00383.x
Subject(s) - generalizability theory , indeterminism , determinism , epistemology , agency (philosophy) , perspective (graphical) , subject (documents) , term (time) , inference , philosophy of science , psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy , developmental psychology , physics , quantum mechanics , library science
Abstract The question of how we apply knowledge from biomedical science to medical and public health practice has been the subject of heated debates about generalizability and related concepts, such as applicability and inductive inference. In this essay, I interpret the term from the perspective of two causal models: determinism and indeterminism. I suggest that theories of generalizability can be formulated on the basis of both models and take the form of testable but unverifiable hypotheses, an attribute that is common to all scientific theories. Nonetheless, there is one noteworthy difference between the two models: determinism allows one to rationalize a decision to treat a certain kind of patient but only indirectly a decision to treat any particular patient, whereas indeterminism accommodates both types of decisions.