Population

This is the landing page for topics related to defining the population from which you aim to draw inferences.

By carefully circumscribing the population, we ensure that the results can be meaningfully generalized to the intended group of [cases]. A case refers to the entity being studies, such as an individual, a dyad, or a school. For intensive longitudinal studies, the focus may be to draw inferences about the population, known as the nomothetic approach, or to draw inferences about cases, known as the idiographic approach.

Below we have specified multiple topics that may help circumscribe the population of interest.

Think more about your population

Defining your population of interest

• [Cases]
• Research question and goals
• Theory formation

Nomothetic versus idiographic focus

• [Population-focused, process-focused, or both]
• Intra-individual versus inter-individual variation
• Ergodicity

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Sophie W. Berkhout

Last modified: 2025-04-9