There are a number of glaring generalisations being made when it comes to discussions about the UK's obese population.
Sweeping generalisations are made about "deadbeat dads"; separated fathers are portrayed as probable abusers or, from the other side, innocent victims of terrible injustices.
Nevertheless, without baseline data on foreign language teachers (Australian Language & Literacy Council 1996; Liddicoat et al. 2007), and without a probability method of sample selection, the study provides important insights, but it is with caution that generalisations are made about the wider population (Traugott et al. 2004).
Yet, the census is also part of the way, through the categories used, that states simplify data on complex realities and reduce groups of people, such as nomads, to a homogenous category about which gross, and often unfounded, generalisations are made (Scott 1998).
As a result, generalisations are made based on limited data.
Thirdly, is there a description of how any inferences or generalisations were made to the wider population?
It may be that clinical or anecdotal evidence leads to a bias towards overestimating the prevalence of post-treatment distress because generalisations are made based on a few remarkable cases.
Stake's approach to organisational case study views this as a fundamentally interpretive process in which generalisations are made by theoretical, not statistical, abstraction (i.e. a rigorous case study analysis is one in which events and actions are linked via a plausible and richly-theorised account) [ 28].
Also, as reflected in our sample the level of education in Tromsø is higher than for Norway as a whole (Table 5) [ 34], and thus generalisation must be made with caution.
While this approach allows changing one predictor function at a time, a generalisation can be made by allowing a number of predictor functions or by adding more constraints on the selected functions, only to give a few examples.
A generalisation cannot be made as to which among the social networking platforms provides the most valuable information since the amount and nature of commentaries generated and shared within each network is a function of its own culture and privacy restrictions.
