Research methods Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Research methods - Assignment ExampleOne of the major sources that can lead to in harshness and unreliability in a investigate is the bias of the researcher (Baumgarten 2012). Biases in research ar mainly categorized into weft bias, measurement bias, and analysis bias (CEM- Research -Bias & fuddle n.d.). The present study focuses on learning about the different types on bias in research studies with specific examples for each of the types. Bias and Types of Bias in Research Studies Bias is said to have go alongred in a research when the outcomes of the research are different from the actual results. For example, if a research is focused on determining the risk of a disease and the results of the research reflect consistent overestimation of the risks, then the study can be said to have been establish on bias. Design of a research is largely responsible for a bias and bias in general presents error in the same means for a repeated number of the experiments for a particular resea rch sample and work (World Health Organization 2001). Thus biases need to be reduced in order to produce a reliable and valid research. Types of Bias with Examples Selection Bias Selection bias is defined as the bias when some participants are favored and selected over others while sampling is conducted and the research outcomes are based on experiments conducted on such samples, thereby affecting the external validity of the research (Gravetter and Forzano 2010). It is also referred to as sampling bias. As a result of such bias, the outcome of the research reflects a systematic difference between those subjects that are include and those that are not. Thus either the results are underestimated or overestimated in terms of their statistics, rates, and ratios (Peat, Mellis and Williams 2002). This means that the study cannot be considered as reliable for use. Moreover, with different outcomes than the actual results, the validity of the research also gets reduced. An example of selec tion bias in research is a comparison of patients in one hospital where a new shock dressing method is applied on them, with patients of another hospital who are offered the standard method of treatment. In such a case the possibility of selection bias is significantly high since different patients in different hospitals differ in their social and biological characteristics. Thus such a research is overt to selection bias (Stommel and Wills 2004). Allocation bias is a type of selection bias that occurs when there is a difference in the characteristics of the different samples put in different trial groups of a particular research experiment, and has significant influence on the outcomes of the research (Peat, Mellis and Williams 2002). Measurement Bias Measurement bias is defined as the bias that occurs when biases or errors occur in the process of measurement and calculations of the data based on which the results are obtained. Such biases can result from erroneous tools of measur ement, errors in calculations, errors while measurements are recorded, participant bias, recall bias, and so on (Howlett, Rogo and Shelton 2013). For example, if dietary recalls are considered for a 24 hours time period, then measurement biases can occur with the methods of the interview, the assumptions of coding, or