Researcher Bias And Publication Bias

Researcher Bias

In conducting research, being virtual can lead to faulty conclusions. This phenomenon is conveniently referred to as bias. Researcher bias happens when someone conducting a study influences the research findings based on their own expected outcomes. During my program, I learned two new things about researcher bias. First, I learned that the bias can happen intentionally, a phenomenon known as an intentional research bias. For instance, an intentional researcher bias might be conducting a survey that poses the question “What is the appropriate self-management for diabetes?” and offers choices of lifestyle changes and sleeping. Here the researcher intentionally creates a survey where there is only one reasonable answer. Secondly, I learned about unintentional researcher bias, which occurs due to a lack of experience and understanding or from poor research design. For example, a psychologist who wants to learn about children’s behavior fills a room with toys, art supplies and a television and then asks a sample population of children to go in and spend some time. Although the privileges that the psychologist provides are likely to be things that children enjoy, their choices are limited, and the psychologist may not learn the exact behavior of the children.

Publication Bias

Publication bias occurs when studies with positive results are likely to be published and they tend to be pushed faster compared to studies with negative findings. It is caused by withholding results from publication, which may be intentional or unintentional. Over the course of my learning, I have learned that publication bias may also involve citation bias, which involves finding literature sources by scanning references from published literature. I also learned that exclusion barriers include language bias, which involves the exclusion of foreign language studies in an individual’s analysis.

This new information about researcher bias and publication bias affected my opinion about the research processes. This new information broadened my knowledge base about how to accurately and correctly interpret the information and to study data with outside influence or bias.