It's common for many of us to feel as if we have no biases. To make that assumption, however, would be woefully incorrect and naive. The hard truth is that we are human, and our cultural biases make their way into every aspect of our lives, including our work. If you're doing market research, that's a bitter pill to swallow. We like to think of ourselves as some of the least biased people in business. We are more aware of consumer behaviors and the psychological implications of marketing messages. Nonetheless, unconscious bias often creeps into our research design. It's not all doom and gloom, though. Numerous studies pinpoint the most pervasive cultural biases present when conducting market research. Being aware will help you filter them out and deliver a more unbiased research report. Here are the top biases to be on the lookout for: Questionnaire design bias. Various cultural biases find their way into questionnaires, ranging from the effect of acculturation to meanings of words in assessments. To illustrate, let's look at one of the most infamous examples of bias found in an SAT analogy question. Below, we see how the meaning of words can differ by culture: RUNNER: MARATHON(A) envoy: embassy(B) martyr: massacre(C) oarsman: regatta(D) horse: stable The correct answer is C. But as the 1994 book "The Bell Curve" suggests, the answer requires knowledge of words and concepts that are more likely to be present in the lives of affluent white students than in the lives of less affluent minority students. You can easily see how this type of word choice could make its way into your questionnaires. When it does, it runs the risk of alienating a portion of your sample base [...]The post Your Cultural Biases Can Impact Research Design appeared first on .
