Division Listservs
APA does not endorse or forward requests for research participation to any APA listserv. Divisions may choose to post requests for research participants to their listservs. If you need more information about a Division listserv, it is recommended that you contact the listserv administrator of that Division. Please note the following statements regarding the limits of division and all other listservs as sources for research participants and samples.
APA disclaimer regarding limits of division listservs as research samples.
-
Listservs (Division and other APA discussion lists) make no claim to be exhaustive collections of members who may fit into one or more specific category (e.g., clinical psychologists, practitioners, educators, and so on). In fact some 45% of APA members do NOT belong to any one Division. By using a Division as the "universe" for one's respondents, researchers are excluding a large number of eligible participants and hence may be introducing bias into their research.
-
Many members belong to more than one Division, and if the research is being sent to more than one Division, the researcher faces the challenge of defining response rate given duplication and of removing duplicate records.
-
APA members and others who are not APA members belong to Divisions and topical listservs for a number of reasons, some of these may not reflect the fact that the member works in the area covered by the Division or list in any more than a tangential sense - raising questions about the suitability of the sample to the research.
|