A framework to analyse gender bias in epidemiological research.
The design and analysis of research may cause systematic gender dependent errors to be produced in results because of gender insensitivity or androcentrism. Gender bias in research could be defined as a systematically erroneous gender dependent approach related to social construct, which incorrectly regards women and men as similar/different. Most gender bias can be found in the context of discovery (development of hypotheses), but it has also been found in the context of justification (methodological process), which must be improved. In fact, one of the main effects of gender bias in research is partial or incorrect knowledge in the results, which are systematically different from the real values. This paper discusses some forms of conceptual and methodological bias that may affect women's health. It proposes a framework to analyse gender bias in the design and analysis of research carried out on women's and men's health problems, and on specific women's health issues. Using examples, the framework aims to show the different theoretical perspectives in a social or clinical research context where forms of selection, measurement and confounding bias are produced as a result of gender insensitivity. Finally, this paper underlines the importance of re-examining results so that they may be reinterpreted to produce new gender based knowledge.
Ruiz-Cantero
María Teresa
MT
Area de Medicina Preventiva y Salud Pública, Departamento de Salud Pública, Universidad de Alicante, Apdo 99, 03080-Alicante, Spain. cantero@ua.es
Vives-Cases
Carmen
C
Artazcoz
Lucía
L
Delgado
Ana
A
García Calvente
Maria Mar
MM
Miqueo
Consuelo
C
Montero
Isabel
I
Ortiz
Rocío
R
Ronda
Elena
E
Ruiz
Isabel
I
Valls
Carme
C
D015982:Bias; D015340:Epidemiologic Research Design; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D008297:Male; D054526:Men's Health; D011287:Prejudice; D012737:Sex Factors; D013179:Spouse Abuse / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D016387:Women's Health