Search results for " Bias"

Asking Sensitive Questions

2013

This article is an empirical contribution to the evaluation of the randomized response technique (RRT), a prominent procedure to elicit more valid responses to sensitive questions in surveys. Based on individual validation data, we focus on two questions: First, does the RRT lead to higher prevalence estimates of sensitive behavior than direct questioning (DQ)? Second, are there differences in the effects of determinants of misreporting according to question mode? The data come from 552 face-to-face interviews with subjects who had been convicted by a court for minor criminal offences in a metropolitan area in Germany. For the first question, the answer is negative. For the second, it is po…

Cognitive processes behind the shooter bias: Dissecting response bias, motor preparation and information accumulation

2021

Abstract A rich body of research points to racial biases in so-called police officer dilemma tasks: participants are generally faster and less error-prone to “shoot” (vs. not “shoot”) Black (vs. White) targets. In three experimental (and two supplemental) studies (total N = 914), we aimed at examining the cognitive processes underlying these findings under fully standardized conditions. To be able to dissect a-priori decision bias, biased information processing and motor preparation, we rendered video sequences of virtual avatars that differed in nothing but the tone of their skin. Modeling the data via drift diffusion models revealed that the threat of a social group can be explicitly lear…

The Difference of Social Network Sites Explained with the Employment Seeking Process

2021

This paper describes the difference between business social network sites and private social network sites under consideration of the employment seeking process. The objective of the paper is to explain the different use of social network sites for different purpose. The use of social network sites can be explained with social capital theory which has been tested with the collected data. This paper test if the social capital theory can be expanded to explain social network sites under consideration of the employment seeking process for Xing as business SNS and Facebook as private SNS. The purpose of this article: According the survey to analyze the difference of social network sites explain…

Socioemotional Wealth and Networking in the Internationalisation of Family SMEs

2021

In internationalisation processes, international expansion exposes family SMEs to external networking and the risks such expansion entails, and perceived threats to their socioemotional wealth (SEW) might restrain their willingness to take these actions. However, very few studies measure SEW and associate it with internationalisation. Considering SEW preservation’s prominence in family SMEs and SMEs’ heavy dependence on networking during internationalisation, we hypothesise that SEW preservation has a negative association and networking has a positive association with the family SMEs’ degree of internationalisation (DOI). We reconstruct four SEW constructs that carry significance for family…

The belief in an unjust world: An egotistic delusion

1996

The main hypothesis of Lerner's just world theory says that people are inclined to think that their physical and social environment is just and that individuals generally get what they deserve and deserve what they get. Contrary to Lerner's assumption, however, it is suggested in the article that in some situations, people may perceive the world as unjust because such a belief has a specific “ego-defensive” compoment for an individual. It is likely, for instance, that the belief in an unjust world, though in itself a legitimate block to success, may be aggrvated in conditions diagnostic for competence and hence can be used as a special form of self-handicapping strategy. This assumption has…

Encuestas a pie de urna en España. ¿Error muestral o sesgo de no respuesta?

2016

Countless examples of misleading forecasts on behalf of both pre-election and exit polls can be found all over the world. Non-representative samples due to differential nonresponse have been claimed as being the main reason for inaccurate exit-poll projections. In real inference problems, it is seldom possible to compare estimates and true values. Electoral forecasts are an exception. Comparisons between estimates and final outcomes can be carried out once votes have been tallied. In this paper, we examine the raw data collected in seven exit polls conducted in Spain and test the likelihood that the data collected in each sampled voting location can be considered as a random sample of actua…

Biodiversity dynamics and their driving factors during the Cretaceous diversification of Spatangoida (Echinoidea, Echinodermata)

2004

Abstract Variations in recorded diversity over time present a scrambled signal that is modulated by a large number of variables: the potential of particular life forms to generate evolutionary innovations, external constraints induced by the environment in its broad sense, the heterogeneity of the fossil record and the analytical artefacts due to sampling bias. A key question is how to characterise and quantify the separate input of any given factor in the overall diversity signal. This paper explores the structure of diversity data for spatangoid heart urchins and the sensitivity of recorded diversity to different factors of analytical bias (length of geological periods, proportion of pala…

ASYMMETRY OF SELECTIVE ATTENTION IN HEALTHY SUBJECTS AND PATIENTS WITH CERVICAL FOCAL DYSTONIA

The environment continuously provides a wealth of information through our senses. This poses a major challenge to our brains to effectively process the relevant pieces of information over space and time, involving attentional processes. Attention selects, modulates and sustains focus on information most relevant for behaviour going beyond our limited capacity to process competing options. Voluntary allocation of attention to features, objects, or regions in space is controlled by top-down mechanisms. On the other hand, salient stimuli can automatically attract attention, even though the subject does not have intentions to attend to these stimuli. A key question is how attention is shaped by…

Multi-site analytical evaluation of a chemiluminescent magnetic microparticle immunoassay (CMIA) for sirolimus on the Abbott ARCHITECT analyzer.

2009

Objective This study evaluated a new chemiluminescent magnetic microparticle immunoassay (CMIA) for sirolimus on the ARCHITECT analyzer. Design and methods Patient and laboratory proficiency samples were tested at three European sites and one site in the United States. Results The CMIA total %CV's were all < 8% and the Limit of Quantification (LOQ) was < 1.52 ng/mL across the four sites. It cross-reacts to sirolimus metabolites F4 and F5 and showed no hematocrit interference over a range of 25% to 55%. Patient specimen correlations to three LC/MS/MS methods gave R ≥ 0.91 at three sites and mean biases of 14%, 25% and 39%. CMIA patient specimen correlations to the Abbott IMx gave R ≥ 0.94 at…

On the ambiguous consequences of omitting variables

2015

This paper studies what happens when we move from a short regression to a long regression (or vice versa), when the long regression is shorter than the data-generation process. In the special case where the long regression equals the data-generation process, the least-squares estimators have smaller bias (in fact zero bias) but larger variances in the long regression than in the short regression. But if the long regression is also misspecified, the bias may not be smaller. We provide bias and mean squared error comparisons and study the dependence of the differences on the misspecification parameter.