Experimenter's Bias - Social Sciences

Social Sciences

The experimenter may introduce cognitive bias into a study in several ways. First, in what is called the observer-expectancy effect, the experimenter may subtly communicate their expectations for the outcome of the study to the participants, causing them to alter their behavior to conform to those expectations. After the data are collected, bias may be introduced during data interpretation and analysis. For example, in deciding which variables to control in analysis, social scientists often face a trade-off between omitted-variable bias and post-treatment bias.

Read more about this topic:  Experimenter's Bias

Famous quotes containing the words social and/or sciences:

    Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same—hardihood. Give them raw truth.
    John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)

    These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not affect me as those more venerable arts of hunting and fishing, and even of husbandry in its primitive and simple form; as ancient and honorable trades as the sun and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man, and invented when these were invented. We do not know their John Gutenberg, or Richard Arkwright, though the poets would fain make them to have been gradually learned and taught.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)