Rogler L H, Mroczek D K, Fellows M, Loftus S T
Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities, Fordham University, Bronx, New York 10458, USA.
J Nerv Ment Dis. 2001 Mar;189(3):182-7. doi: 10.1097/00005053-200103000-00007.
A number of researchers have observed that response biases, defined as when subjects respond to items in research instruments in ways that do not coincide with the intent or content of the instrument, suffuse measurements and assessments of mental disorders. They cautioned that the response bias problem has been neglected in mental health research at the price of substantial error. Have the cautions been heeded? Or does the neglect of response bias continue? Articles published in 1998 in three major psychiatric journals were examined: Archives of General Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, and the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. The articles were examined to determine whether response biases were mentioned and whether systematic efforts were made to attend to their influence on the findings of the study. Each article was assessed twice by independent raters. The examination indicates that a very small minority of the articles reviewed mentioned response bias and that among those mentioning it, a minority attempted to control for bias effects. Cautions offered about response bias have not been heeded. Accordingly, the issue is one of how to incorporate concerns about response bias into the institutional structures that influence the culture of mental health research.
一些研究人员观察到，反应偏差（即受试者对研究工具中的项目做出的反应方式与工具的意图或内容不一致）充斥着精神障碍的测量和评估。他们警告说，反应偏差问题在心理健康研究中一直被忽视，代价是出现大量误差。这些警告是否得到了重视？还是对反应偏差的忽视仍在继续？对1998年发表在三种主要精神病学杂志上的文章进行了审查：《普通精神病学档案》《美国精神病学杂志》和《神经与精神疾病杂志》。审查这些文章以确定是否提及了反应偏差，以及是否做出了系统的努力来关注其对研究结果的影响。每篇文章由独立的评估人员评估两次。审查表明，所审查的文章中极少数提到了反应偏差，而在那些提到反应偏差的文章中，少数试图控制偏差效应。关于反应偏差的警告并未得到重视。因此，问题在于如何将对反应偏差的关注纳入影响心理健康研究文化的制度结构中。
