EUnetHTA Adaptation Glossary (beta)

Generalisability - is the degree to which the results of a study or systematic review can be extrapolated to other circumstances, in particular to routine health care situations. Measurements can be used for different purposes. The same measurements will be used for introduction of new programmes or new technologies, such as equipment, medical-technical devices and pharmaceuticals, for extension of the current programmes and treatments (as well as reduction of waiting periods) and organisational and other changes in the health care system.

Generalisability

‘Generalisability’ is the extension of specific research findings and conclusions from a study conducted on a (relatively limited) sample population to the population at large (for example to the whole population of the country).

In many ways, generalisability amounts to nothing more than making predictions based on a recurring experience. Having collected sufficient data to support a hypothesis, a premise regarding the behavior of that data can be formulated, making it generalisable to similar circumstances [1].

In our view transferability should not be understood as something related to "organisational context" only. Two countries may have similar organisational structure, but transferability may still be an issue (if e.g. the genetic profile of the populations is different).

Generalisability and transferability both refer to the degree to which results of an HTA can be extrapolated to other circumstances or settings. The two terms are often seen as having the same meaning, and are very closely related. It could however be desirable to ascribe different meaning to the terms. One possible way of separating the two terms is as follows:

Generalisability basically refers to the external validity of an HTA. In general this refers to both interventions, outcomes, units and settings. Generalisability as a concept grows out of research methodology

Generalizability is the degree to which the results of a study or systematic review can be extrapolated to other circumstances, in particular to routine health care situations.

Generalisability refers to whether the results of an HTA report can be extrapolated to other settings. This is sometimes referred to as ‘external validity’.
For the WP5 toolkit, transferability is about the ability to apply information and/or data from one report into a report for the user’s target setting. Transferability is dependent on context specificity.

Generalisable information/data can be readily adopted. However, the more context specific, the less likely that data/information in one report can be adopted into another i.e. transferred without making any changes or additions.