Edited by: Paul J. Buy in print. Looks like you do not have access to this content. Entries Per Page:. Methods Map Research Methods. Explore the Methods Map. This inaccurate data is just as damaging and highlights just how important selection of participants can be for your research.
Acquiescence bias is a form of response bias where participants respond in agreement with all questions within the survey. In most cases, if your survey is well designed, that results in the participant agreeing with at least two contradictory statements.
The answers provided this way are then no longer accurate or truthful. The reality is that all of us have our unique view of the world, and it is highly unlikely anyone will agree with everything on a survey. There has been much research carried out on this kind of response.
American educational psychologist Lee Cronbach theorized that it is a result of the participant looking at the question and actively searching for information from their own experiences to support it. A respondent could answer yes to the first question, because we all like to think of ourselves as likeable, social people. However, when faced with the second question, they may remember a nice night in they had enjoyed recently and answer with that.
Those two answers may seem to contradict each other. Finally, we have dissent bias. This is the exact opposite of acquiescence bias where the participant seeks to disagree with every statement or question the researcher makes. With the same causes, dissent bias can be just as problematic for researchers as acquiescence bias, and it must be remedied in the same way.
Avoiding response bias is easier when you know the types of response bias, and why they occur. There are several things that every researcher can do to overcome response bias. As we discussed previously, some demographics are more susceptible to certain types of bias. You can put demographic understanding at the top of your research by asking yourself a few simple questions:. Careful question phrasing is critical to get an unbiased survey and responses.
We talked before about inherent bias, but this also applies to questions that produce an emotive response and can cause acquiescence bias or extreme responding. Follow these simple survey best practices to avoid word bias in your surveys:. To keep participants focused, avoid using one type of question all the way through. Instead, mix binary response questions yes or no with those that offer a range of responses.
This avoids the participant simply giving the same answer each time, and thus forces them to think about their responses. This applies to more than just the style of question. Avoid asking questions about the same topic one after the other, as this can lead to reflex answers given without thought. Instead, mix up topics throughout the survey, so that the participant is not just automatically following what they answered last time and has to think about each question on its own.
Participants often wish to give the best answer possible, but for some questions a participant may not have an answer. In fact, this minor addition to your survey could remove a lot more inaccurate answers than you think. As we have seen, several forms of response bias can be caused by participants being influenced by the researchers themselves, or the motives behind the survey.
This makes every aspect of the administration of the survey crucial to its success. During all correspondence of any kind, maintain a professional, unbiased demeanor to ensure participants recognize the importance of the situation. Using the digital approach can remove some of these risks. Participants second guessing research motives or finding out motives before taking the survey both result in response bias.
Do this by maintaining the integrity of the survey and ensuring participants do not have additional information. To ascertain if participants have any understanding of the survey motives, a short after-survey questionnaire can be used. Your questions should be clear, precise, and easily understandable. That means simple, unbiased language that avoids using words that evoke an emotional rather than through-based response.
And so on. In addition, try and avoid using a lot of negative words, as these can have an effect on how the participant perceives the survey and skew their responses. Finally, avoid word tricks. Be transparent with the audience and allow them to develop their answers.
This can also be related to cases where people may want to form class or belong to an elite group, so they lie to look better. This is because society has conditioned cheating to be seen as something bad. For example, a company looking to improve its product quality may send out a survey to know what customers think should be changed in the product design.
In this case, the customer may have no improvement suggestion to make to the questionnaire. Only a few respondents care about brand identity.
Yet, many will go for "Yes" because they think that is what the brand wants to hear. The extreme response bias arises as a result of respondents giving exaggerated responses to a question. This may be done to make themselves look good or another person looks bad to the questionnaire.
Some may even do this to get an extra plate of food as compensation from a restaurant. Most people will choose the "More than enough" option to portray need, desirability and seek pity even if it is too small.
This is because the "Too small" option may make the respondent come off as been proud and not content. This occurs when the respondent gives a neutral response to all the questions asked. A lot of respondents do this when they are indecisive or have no idea about an answer to the question being asked.
So, they give neutral responses to all questions. This type of response is equally as bad as the extreme response. The image below is an example of neutral response bias. Acquiescence bias is a form of response bias where respondents give positive answers to all the questions asked.
In some cases, they don't bother to read the questions before choosing affirmative answers. This type of response bias is usually the respondent's fault and is mostly intentional. This response bias is usually easy to spot as it leads to a train of contradictory statements from the respondents. By choosing an affirmative answer to all the questions, the respondent made a contradictory statement. How can you be an atheist and still believe in God?
The dissent bias is the opposite of acquiescence bias, and is a form of response bias where respondents give negative answers to all the questions asked.
This response bias is mostly intentional because they don't usually attempt to read the questions. This may happen as a result of the questions being too much for the respondent to answer. Therefore, at a point, respondents just start choosing random answers to the questions. Some questions may appeal to a person's emotions and make them give bias answers. This is due to a human's emotional nature.
For example, here is an emotional approach to asking someone if they are planning to have children anytime soon. The questionnaire could have easily asked if the respondent would consider having a child soon.
But to appeal to the person's emotion, the current state of the parents was put into consideration. Many online survey platforms reward respondents when they participate in surveys. Before participating in a paid survey, respondents are usually made to go through a pre-screening phase to confirm whether they are fit to participate in the survey.
At this point, respondents want to qualify for these surveys, so they can take them and get rewarded. Therefore, they resort to lying for rewards. Some respondents will answer in the affirmative, even if they don't fall within that age range just to qualify for the reward. Respondents usually find it difficult to answer some questions because it is too complex. So, they just choose a random answer to the question.
The response bias is usually intentional in this case, and it can be related to multiple-choice questions in the educational system. When students are assessed and asked to choose an answer from the options, they may choose a random answer if they are not sure about the correct one. By allowing them to save and continue later, they will be able to take a break when they are tired and respond correctly when they are ready to.
Non-response bias is a type of bias that occurs when people are unwilling or unable to respond to a survey due to a factor that makes them differ greatly from people who respond. The difference between non-respondents and respondents is usually an influencing factor for the lack of response.
Sometimes called participation bias, a non-response bias may be due to a poor survey construction and targeting skill from the questionnaire.
It may also be because of an irrelevant decision made by the respondent. For example, a survey asking about the best alcoholic drink brand targeted at older religious people will likely receive no response.
In other cases, the survey may not even reach the target respondent—like an email that dropped in the spam folder. Let us consider a database of email addresses belonging to older people who only use their email accounts to be in contact with their children. In most cases, we may see that these people only know how to send and read emails, which is something that was taught to them by their children. Now consider an individual who is about opening a new club and need to perform a competitive analysis by running a survey asking a few questions about existing night clubs.
A night club will not resonate with older people the way it will do with young folks. Well, except if it is a nightclub for older people. A lot of young people watch adult videos on their internet-enabled devices, but most of them are ashamed to talk about it. Therefore running a survey that contains questions like, how often do you watch adult videos?
What is your favorite adult video site? This is because they are mostly embarrassed talking about it. A better way to receive more responses to questions like this will be to allow them to remain anonymous when answering these questions. Even at that, some will choose not to respond, due to fear that they may be exposed in the future.
Consider a survey measuring the rate at which separated parents comply with child support payment directive. A parent who does not regularly pay child support will be most uncomfortable filling out this survey.
Therefore treating a bias that inclined the data towards a more law-abiding net sample than the original sample. This reaction is obvious and we can also say that surveys that explicitly state its involvement with a government agency will likely receive a non-response bias.
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