Catalogue of bias: racial bias

Background Racial bias is a distortion arising from systemic, institutional, interpersonal or individual forms of explicit (conscious) or implicit (unconscious) prejudice against individuals or groups based on social constructs of race or ethnicity that influences the planning, methods, results, interpretation, dissemination and application of health research. As a flaw in research design that undermines the validity of results, research-based racial bias should be distinguished from everyday racial bias—a phenomenon characterised by unfair or harmful treatment of specific members of society. Racial bias in research can take various forms, including the systemic under-representation of ethnic minorities (related to sampling and recruitment bias, impacting external validity), the use of non-validated methods or tools to analyse data from diverse populations (related to measurement bias and impacting construct validity),1 and the inappropriate interpretation of disparities in research findings due to the presentation of the social construct of race as biological...
Source: Evidence-Based Medicine - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: EBM learning Source Type: research