Children Cheating on Exercise Study
by Kirsty on Jul.11, 2009, under Healthcare News
A study in London gave 200 children pedometers to see how far they walked or ran. The researchers only realised that some of the children were cheating when they were surprised by the activity level of some of the obese children, it was then that they discovered that they had been attached to dog collars.
The researchers claim that it is not uncommon for participants to manipulate the findings. In psychology this is known as social desirability bias, in other words the participants want to been seen in a positive light so they think that if they can make the results higher that the researchers will be pleased with them.
This is a classic example of one of the biggest flaws in research if the participant is aware of the experiment, thus raising the question how accurate is any medical research?
