ReviewEpidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.)2017
Generalizing Study Results: A Potential Outcomes Perspective.
Review in Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.), 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 143 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
143 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 260 citations in OpenAlex.
- Threats to external validity in the neuroprediction of substance use treatment outcomes.The American journal of drug and alcohol abuse · 2023Pooled it
- A Systematic Review of Simulation Models to Track and Address the Opioid Crisis.Epidemiologic reviews · 2022Pooled it
- Between-trial heterogeneity in ARDS research.Intensive care medicine · 2021Pooled it
- Causal language and strength of inference in academic and media articles shared in social media (CLAIMS): A systematic review.PloS one · 2018Pooled it
- Examining the effect of universal testing and treatment strategies for HIV prevention in Zambia and South Africa: generalizing the results of the HPTN 071 (PopART) trial.Journal of the International AIDS Society · 2025Trial
- Participant Perspectives and Experiences Entering an Intensively Monitored Antiretroviral Pause: Results from the AIDS Clinical Trials Group A5345 Biomarker Study.AIDS research and human retroviruses · 2021Trial
- Baseline Characteristics Explain Differences in Effectiveness of Randomization to Daily Oral TDF/FTC PrEP Between Transgender Women and Cisgender Men Who Have Sex With Men in the iPrEx Trial.Journal of acquired immune deficiency syndromes (1999) · 2019Trial
- Generalisability of an online randomised controlled trial: an empirical analysis.Journal of epidemiology and community health · 2018Trial
- Generalizing Conditional Average Treatment Effects From Nested Randomized Trials to Trial-Eligible Individuals.Statistics in medicine · 2026Article
- Comparative effectiveness of posterior cervical foraminotomy versus anterior cervical discectomy with fusion for single-level cervical radiculopathy: a target trial emulation study.European spine journal : official publication of the European Spine Society, the European Spinal Deformity Society, and the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society · 2026Article
- Combining Observational Studies to Reduce Multiple Biases.Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
- Quantifying and adjusting for selection biases in the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study using population-wide individual-level registry information.International journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Uptake of HIV Self-testing Among Adolescents and Young Adults in Nigeria: A Secondary Observational Analysis of a Stepped-Wedge, Cluster-Randomized Trial.AIDS and behavior · 2026Article
- A causal inference framework for poststratification: a method for improving external validity in epidemiological studies.BMC medical research methodology · 2026Article
- Assessing Treatment Effects in Observational Data With Missing Confounders: A Comparative Study of Practical Doubly-Robust and Traditional Missing Data Methods.Statistics in medicine · 2026Article
- Expert perspectives on exposure-response functions for urban health policy: Lessons from a UBDPolicy workshop.Environmental research · 2026Review
- Association between obesity and neurodevelopmental delay risk in children under five years: A study from Tumbes, Peru.PloS one · 2026Article
- A Primer on Large-Sample Statistical Inference for Epidemiologists.Epidemiologic methods · 2026Article
- Moving From Representativeness Toward Transportability in an Era of Digital and Big Data.International journal of public health · 2026Review
- Transporting Results from a Trial to an External Target Population When Trial Participation Impacts Adherence.Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
83 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Great care is taken in epidemiologic studies to ensure the internal validity of causal effect estimates; however, external validity has received considerably less attention. When the study sample is not a random sample of the target population, the sample average treatment effect, even if internally valid, cannot usually be expected to equal the average treatment effect in the target population. The utility of an effect estimate for planning purposes and decision making will depend on the degree of departure from the true causal effect in the target population due to problems with both internal and external validity. Herein, we review concepts from recent literature on generalizability, one facet of external validity, using the potential outcomes framework. Identification conditions sufficient for external validity closely parallel identification conditions for internal validity, namely conditional exchangeability; positivity; the same distributions of the versions of treatment; no interference; and no measurement error. We also require correct model specification. Under these conditions, we discuss how a version of direct standardization (the g-formula, adjustment formula, or transport formula) or inverse probability weighting can be used to generalize a causal effect from a study sample to a well-defined target population, and demonstrate their application in an illustrative example.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.