Sample type
Classroom and lab samples are often criticized in organizational research because they are believed to be non representative of organizational settings (Highhouse & Gillespie, 2008; Peterson, 2001). The implicit assumption is that results of student samples, particularly ones working on laboratory tasks, are not likely to generalize to real working populations. Alternatively, Driskell and Salas (1992) and Mathieu, Heffner, Goodwin, Salas, and Cannon-Bowers (2000) argued that laboratory research with student samples may generalize to work teams when the focus is upon the underlying principles or the construct relationships in question. In a comprehensive review of 82 meta-analyses, Mitchell (2012) concluded that the generalizability of laboratory effect sizes to field settings varied widely across fields, with work in industrial/organizational psychology exhibiting among the highest convergence. Nevertheless, the question of the comparability of research conducted with student teams—typically performing contrived or classroom-related tasks—to actual teams working in organizational settings has both practical and theoretical importance.