Generalizability is an important principle that cuts across research domains, and it, perhaps, is the best place to begin a discussion of range restriction in communication research. The goal of research in most situations is to draw conclusions about the strength of an effect or size of a relationship among constructs in the population of interest. Identifying findings in the sample utilized in a study is not the end goal, but rather a means to reach the goal of understanding construct tendencies in the population.

There are two obstacles that typically stand in the way in the process of generalizing from a sample to a population: measurement error and range restriction. These two obstacles can be formidable. They almost always result in an underestimate of the ...