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(actually, bias)
As you may have noticed
Weve moved into learning about what is
required to consider a result important.
The result has be more different than other
scores by an amount bigger than would be
expected by chance (e.g., bigger than would
be found in 95% of all normal cases)
Small differences can be accounted for by
general slop (correctly called the Standard
Error of the mean)
The job of statistical tests
Detect whether the difference between two
numbers (means, individual scores and a
meanwhatever) is due to slop or normal
variation . Thats really all youre doing (in
complicated, often tedious ways).
But well get to the tests later, after weve
talked about a few other concepts that will
figure into them.
Reliability
Reliability means
simply that repeating
the process will yield
the same results. A
test is reliable if it
produces the same
outcome for the same
input every time.
A special kind of reliability
Inter-rater reliability refers the agreement
between two or more different people (or
groups, organizations) when assessing
the same things.
Can be as simple as two physicians
agreeing on a diagnosis or as complex as
getting a group consensus. Common in
Epidemiological and behavioral research
(note to professor)
Torture the class until the come
up with 6 examples of reliability
Validity
Validity is a complex topics
with many different types
(face, internal, external)
but were only going to
consider one:
DOES THE STUDY (test,
conclusion, essay)
APPROPRIATELY go about
its business?
(note to professor)
(you know--- make them come up
with some examples)
Bias
(we touched on bias when we spoke of the
use of blinding in experiments)
BIAS refers to elements of the situation
that make one outcome more likely to
occur than another.
Sometimes difficult to detect, often hidden
in data collection procedures (e.g.,
collecting samples for control and
treatment groups at different times of day)
Selection Bias
Subjects not randomly assigned to groups:
Subjects choose to be controls or
experimental (people with worse symptoms
want to be experimental)
Investigator doesnt randomly assign patients
to control/experimental groups (wants to give
the hopeless patients a chance).
Recall Bias
(a factor in retrospective cohort studies)

Events in the present affect recall of the
past. For example, mothers with children
who have birth defects may overestimate
how much medication they might have
used.
Sampling Bias
The group of volunteers may not be
reflective of the overall population (a real
problem when finances are low for a
study)
Late-look Bias
Most frequently occurs when the disease
under study has a rapid mortality. The
samples tend to include only less severe
cases, which could be different from the
majority of the illnesses.
Surveillance Bias
Subjects often act differently when they
know that they are being monitored (for
example, diabetes patient in a study may
change their eating habits because of guilt
or shame, causing an improvement that
might be attributed to the drug of study).
Reducing Bias in Clinical Trials
Randomize, Randomize, Randomize
Blind and Double Blind studies
Placebo Group
Crossover studies (subjects get to be both
in control/placebo and experimental
groups not at the same time)
Randomize, Randomize, Randomize