The phrase "a widespread notion" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe an idea or belief that is commonly held or accepted by a large number of people.
Example: "There is a widespread notion that success is solely determined by hard work, but many other factors also play a significant role."
Alternatives: "a common belief" or "a prevalent idea."
"There's a widespread notion that to be sophisticated now you have to be a cynic," Mr. Forsman said.
The findings also challenged a widespread notion that children who have sleep troubles early on tend to outgrow them.
But in 1960 there was a widespread notion that the USA were not managing what they should be managing: time for a new New Deal.
This idea of using sports to save the nation and later to showcase China's greatness became a widespread notion among many Chinese.
But a widespread notion is that women, to mosquitoes at least, are the sweeter sex, supposedly because estrogen is a strong attractant.
Some are beginning to speak up, challenging a widespread notion that homosexuality was brought in by foreigners.Africa's Anglican clergymen get little education in sexuality.
That Bin Laden was found not in Pakistan's rugged tribal areas but in an affluent town less than an hour from the capital, Islamabad, has prompted a rethinking of the widespread notion that he had little control over Al Qaeda.
Perhaps the most compelling act that the presence of Sophia's wife performs, is a challenge to the widespread notion that black people are more homophobic and transphobic than any other racial group.
The proposed test fits well with the widespread notion that a treatment effect estimate has to pass a cut-off of statistical significance, resulting in an aversion to null results or, conversely, in significance chasing [ 40, 41].
This might reveal that normal crickets do not look for water surfaces using a light cue even after water deprivation, a finding that counters the widespread notion that hairworms cause host thirstiness to induce them to approach water (see Thomas et al. 2003).
Even the country's greatest novelist, Naguib Mahfouz, spent the better part of four decades as a midlevel government clerk, though he was eventually appointed a consultant to the minister of culture (the widespread notion that Mahfouz was a genial storyteller from the souk is too simple: he knew the corridors of power as intimately as the alleyways of the old city).
