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Surveys using college student samples are a common source of data for social sciences because of cost and easy availability of subjects. Recently, online opt-in surveys have become a popular source of data because they are relatively inexpensive and data collection can be completed quickly. The current study compares two samples: a 2018 sample of 525 undergraduate students taking criminal justice classes at a large Midwestern university that completed an in-class survey and a 2023 sample of 1,216 Americans that completed an online opt-in survey. It compares the prevalence and correlates of perceptions of police-military equivalency between the two samples. The main independent variables were significant in both models, but the models differed in terms of the significance of the demographic variables used as controls, which indicates that student samples are somewhat generalizable. Implications for future research, including the importance of replicating studies that use student samples, are discussed.
Hickling et al. (Fri,) studied this question.