What is researcher bias and how do I avoid it?

Writing a true research paper, complete with some sort of study or experiment, is required for many degree programs. From psychology to marketing and especially in the hard sciences, the ability to design and execute a research project is an important part of your college education.

But that doesn't make it easy. We all have certain preconceived ideas that can easily slide into our research papers. Those ideas can become researcher bias and eliminate any usefulness that the study has if not controlled for in the experiment.

 

Acknowledging bias

 

Qualitative research is less likely to suffer from researcher bias because you are working with numbers and things that are accepted as fact. But in quantitative research, where you are looking at opinions and reaching conclusions, it can be much harder to keep your own beliefs from showing up in the results of the research. But that's not the only place research bias can appear. Sometimes, the first place bias shows up is in the phrasing of the research question.

If you are dealing with a highly controversial subject, like abortion or politics, the first step in avoiding researcher bias is to acknowledge your own beliefs. By understanding your own feelings on a topic, you can best guard against including that bias in your research question. For example, the phrases freedom of choice and right to life are fraught with bias. As a researcher, you need to choose terms that are as neutral as possible.

 

Find the bias in the design

 

Research papers require that you design, and sometimes implement, a research project. When you design the project one of the things you need to consider is what sort of bias is inherent in the project design. For example, if the research question is whether stay-at-home moms are more likely to feed their children fast food than mothers who work outside the home, conducting your research during the normal work day is a bias in the design. You are going to observe a behavior when one of your study groups is less likely to be able to participate.

 

Find the bias in the questions

 

Before you start your research paper, ask a friend to go over the research questions with you. It's hard to see bias in your own word choices, but sometimes a friend can let you know that you are asking a leading question. For example, asking people if they support giving food to children who don't have enough is not the same as asking people if they support welfare. The choice of words and phrases will make a difference in how people respond to your study.

Ultimately, when writing a research paper the goal is to be as objective as possible. When you recognize that you have opinions of your own, you make it easier to see when those personal opinions are impacting your research. When you spot bias, talk to a friend, mentor or teacher about how to best eliminate it from your project.