RATES OF PARTICIPATION FOR CLINICAL CHILD AND PEDIATRIC PSYCHOLOGY RESEARCH - ISSUES IN METHODOLOGY

Conducted content analysis of published articles in the Journal of Clinical Child Psychology and the Journal of Pediatric Psychology to investigate rates of participation. Returns of informed consent and other study characteristics reveal information about sample selection and generalizability of research results. The analyses indicated that the majority of articles did not report rates of participation or provide adequate information about other sample characteristics. Such neglect poses difficulties for the assessment of the representativeness of the sample and generalizability of the findings. This analysis suggests that researchers should be more rigorous in reporting sample characteristics and should improve the recruitment of more representative samples.