Psychological Research with Pediatric Conditions: If We Specialize, Can We Generalize?

Considered threats to validity and generalizability of psychologicalresearch with pediatric populations and proposed ways to betterunderstand and manage these problems. Variation due to characteristicsof acute and chronic conditions (e.g., duration, severity, illnesscourse), settings and referral patterns, family environmentalcharacteristics, as well as investigators' decisions concerningcriteria and recruitment limit inferences concerning the impactof pediatric conditions on psychological development and generalizabilityof findings. These problems call for an expanded use of replication,cross-center, population-based, and theory-driven research.Scientific progress will be made by increasing dialogues andcollaboration among researchers concerning generalizabilityproblems and improving research training in epidemiologicalmethods, analysis of large-scale data sets, and meta-analysis.