Types of Bias Commonly Arising From Surveys

Three of the main forms of bias to look out for when critically appraising the findings from a survey are recall bias, reporting bias and cognitive bias. There are many specific types of the latter two form of bias and you would do well to go through these alongside recall bias to check which ones could apply to your particular study and in what sense(s), therefore, the study findings ought to be viewed more tentatively. Relevant links are provided below.

recall bias

reporting bias

cognitive bias

Please also have a look at the resource 4 Types of bias in research … , which provides details of concepts such as sampling bias and non-response bias.

It is particularly important to be aware of these forms of bias when comparing findings across different groups in a context where one group may be more pre-disposed to a particular form of bias than the other. By way of illustration and to help inform the critical analysis of your own work or that of other researchers, you should find it helpful to consult the article

Recall Bias can be a Threat to Retrospective and Prospective Research Designs

from the Internet Journal of Epidemiology.

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Types of Bias Commonly Arising From Surveys by Margaret MacDougall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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