There is a Bias in Aviation Against Research That is Perceived to be “Easy”

<p>The purpose of conducting research is to make contributions to the body of knowledge. In managing research studies, researchers are often forced to make decisions on a series of tradeoffs due to scarce resources. They may have to select participants from certain accessible populations, limit the time required to conduct the study, or use a minimal number of researchers due to funding constraints. The purpose of this current study was to examine for a possible bias on the perceived value of scientific research based on the location in which the data was collected, the amount of time required to complete the study, and the number of researchers involved in the study. Over a series of four studies, 1796 total participants provided ratings on their perceived scientific value of the accomplished research. The findings indicated that those studies which were conducted in a laboratory, took more time, and used more researchers had more perceived scientific value than the exact same study completed in a classroom, in a shorter amount of time, and with fewer researchers. Additionally, ease/difficulty was shown to be a significant mediator, further providing evidence that the perceived ease or difficulty of the study was influencing the participants’ ratings.</p>