bias vb. Reference library
Garner's Modern English Usage (5 ed.)
... , vb. , makes biased and biasing in AmE and BrE alike—not ⋆biassed and ⋆biassing . See spelling (c) . Cf. unbiased . For the reasons to favor bias against or bias in favor of instead of bias toward , see toward ( c ) . ...
Bias Reference library
Concise Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain
... 1881: 29; Orkney. Scottish: see Byass...
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A Dictionary of Forensic Science
... A figure of merit related to accuracy and trueness . The bias of a measurement is the total systematic error associated with that measurement. Bias is the inverse of trueness; a high bias implies low...
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A Dictionary of Electronics and Electrical Engineering (5 ed.)
... ( bias voltage ) A voltage applied to an electronic device to ensure that it operates on a particular portion of its characteristic curve. ...
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A Dictionary of Marketing (4 ed.)
... The opposite of detached objectivity. There can be biased questions, biased responses, or biased samples within market research. Biased questions occur when the questions are slanted in such a way as to elicit a particular response from the respondent . Biased questions can occur from the way the questions are phrased. Bias can also be introduced from an interviewer’s facial or body expressions. A biased response occurs when the respondent says something that is not true. Biased responses can be made consciously or subconsciously. A biased sample occurs...
bias n. Quick reference
A Dictionary of Nursing (8 ed.)
... [ bi -ăs] n. systematic deviation of results from the truth. The different types include selection bias (failing to select a sample that is representative of the wider population), nonresponse bias (respondents differing from nonrespondents in statistical surveys), and social desirability bias (respondents giving false answers they believe to be more socially acceptable than the...
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A Dictionary of Ecology (5 ed.)
... ( bias function ) In statistics, the difference between the expected value of an estimator and the true value of the parameter being estimated or of the median...
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A Dictionary of Media and Communication (3 ed.)
...bias ; news values ; political bias ; selective representation ; spin . 6. ( technological bias ) The contention that the various ways in which different media encode information favour differing intellectual and emotional responses. N. Postman argues that the accessibility and speed of their information gives them political biases , their physical form gives them sensory biases ( see also sense ratio ), the conditions in which people attend to them give them social biases; and their technical and economic structure give them content biases....
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The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Mathematics (6 ed.)
...bias A prejudice or a lack of objectivity or randomness resulting in an imbalance that makes it likely that the outcome will tend to be distorted. In statistics this is when a process contains some systematic imbalance so that, on average, the outcome of the process is not equal to the true value. Randomization techniques are employed to try and remove bias that may result from other sample estimator selection methods requiring choices to be made. See also non-response bias , response bias , selection bias , self-selected samples...
bias n. Quick reference
Concise Medical Dictionary (10 ed.)
... n. systematic deviation of results from the truth. The many different types of bias include selection bias (failing to select a sample that is representative of the wider population), nonresponse bias (respondents differing from nonrespondents in statistical surveys), social desirability bias (respondents giving false answers they believe to be more socially acceptable than the truth), and systematic measurement errors (all measurements deviate from the truth in the same systematic...
Bias Reference library
Dictionary of American Family Names (2 ed.)
... US frequency (2010): 6518 1 Scottish (Orkney): variant of Scottish Byres (see Byers ). 2 English: variant of Byas . 3 French: habitational name from any of the places in Landes and Lot-et-Garonne named Bias...
bias Quick reference
A Dictionary of Journalism
...bias The favouring of one side, viewpoint, argument, or disposition over another ( compare balance ). Bias within journalism is sometimes a conscious and deliberate approach, as in advocacy journalism and some forms of alternative journalism that reject objectivity and impartiality and prefer to state their bias openly to enable members of the audience to take it into consideration. Other forms of bias might be unconscious or the result of structural factors: for example, a newsroom dominated by white, middle-aged, heterosexual men who drive fast...
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A Dictionary of Computer Science (7 ed.)
...(a) bias in sampling , when members of the sample are not fully representative of the population being studied; (b) nonresponse bias in sample surveys, when an appreciable proportion of those questioned fail to reply; (c) question bias , a tendency for the wording of the question to invite an incorrect reply; (d) interviewer bias , a problem of personal interviewing when respondents try to reply in the way the interviewer is thought to expect. A narrower definition of bias in statistical analysis ( see statistical methods ) is the difference between...
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A Dictionary of Dentistry (2 ed.)
...bias n. Any factor that distorts (or could distort) the true nature of an event, observation, or the results of a study. A study that has minimized bias sufficiently has internal validity. Selection bias is bias in how participants may be selected and allocated to the study or to groups in the study. Ideally there should be selection though random sequence generation and allocation concealment. Allocation bias occurs if groups differ systematically when they are set up. Performance bias is attributed to failure to ‘blind’ participants and personnel to...
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A Dictionary of Public Health (2 ed.)
...of these are variations of fundamental flaws in design, methods, procedures, or logical reasoning. The most common types include selection bias , observer bias , bias due to confounding , and bias due to errors of logical reasoning . Several of the biases encountered in epidemiological and social science investigations may include more than one of these unless investigators exercise great care with methods, design, and procedures. Other causes are systematic variation of measurements and/or statistical summary measures (means, rates, measures of...
bias Reference library
Australian Law Dictionary (3 ed.)
...biased legislation might at the same time offend a constitutional provision (e.g. Constitution s 92), in which case it will be invalid for being unconstitutional, not for being biased in favour of one state over another). Bias is a ground for appeal or judicial review . Bias may be real bias or apparent bias . In practice, real bias will be difficult to demonstrate. However, where the decision-maker is a court or tribunal making rulings in a formal adversarial setting, the mere appearance of bias will disqualify. The traditional test in the UK for...
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The Oxford Dictionary of Sports Science & Medicine (3 ed.)
... 1 In research, the distortion of data or findings by the research method employed or by the researcher's suppositions. Bias results in a loss of accuracy , reliability , and validity of the research. 2 In statistics, a difference between the hypothetical ‘true value’ of a variable in a population and that obtained in a particular...
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A Dictionary of Human Geography
... The conscious or unconscious act of failing to be objective in one or more aspects of the research process. The term is usually understood pejoratively in science and by those human geographers who consider their research to be scientific. Bias can occur in the way research questions are phrased, data are collected, data are analysed, and results interpreted. Many human geographers now believe that objectivity in research is unattainable, and that what some call ‘bias’ should be seen more positively as a synonym for situated knowledge . See also ...
bias
Dictionary of the Social Sciences
... Distortion in research and analysis, especially due to preconceptions of the researcher, but also as a function of unanticipated relationships of dependence among the variables under study or in the methods of gathering data. Certain kinds of bias have become well known in the social sciences. The sex of the interviewer, for instance, may introduce a persistent bias in responses to certain kinds of questions. In statistics, bias has a strict meaning that refers to systematic, nonrandom error that separates a “true” value from the average value obtained...
bias Quick reference
A Dictionary of Business Research Methods
... In sampling , the application of a selection technique that results in the sample not being representative of the population from which it is drawn. This is often the case with sampling methods that select data for statistical analysis using a non-probability sampling method. The application of inferential statistical techniques of testing (for differences or relationships) to such data will produce results, but these are likely to be flawed—in particular, the interpretation in terms of statistical significance may be compromised....
