Understanding Bias in Assessments and Social Service Planning
Understanding Bias in Assessments
Biases are factors and effects that can distort the validity of an internal or external evaluation. There are different types:
- Instrumentation bias: Occurs when the assessment instrument itself introduces differences between the subjects involved. For example, the language used in the test can have different levels of difficulty for some subjects and others. In open questionnaires, bias may arise from the evaluator’s interpretation of the responses.
- Non-reactive program bias: Is produced by the mere existence of the program and may have its origin in the context and the instruments, affecting both those being evaluated and the evaluators. Deserving special attention are:
- The Hawthorne effect: Occurs when a person realizes they are being evaluated and modifies their behavior (participant observation).
- The John Henry effect: Is produced by a strong competitive response.
- Halo effect bias: Occurs when a judge’s reviews are used to rate the subjects on a number of features produced by conduct.
- Limits bias: Occurs in the measurement instrument. High scores are cut by the instrument, producing the ceiling effect, and low scores produce the floor effect.
Planning Unit 5: Social and Social Services
1. Introduction
Planning within the scope of social action, including program monitoring and evaluation, will be a hub around which to organize the strategy for social intervention. It will order, consistently over time, the performance of the various actors involved.
2. Concept of Planning
Planning includes establishing or selecting means for the achievement of certain goals set beforehand. The United Nations defines planning as: “The process of choosing and selecting between alternative forms of action with a view to allocating scarce resources, in order to obtain a specific objective on the basis of a preliminary diagnosis that covers all relevant factors that can be identified.”
3. Factors Influencing Planning
- Planning corresponds to core values on which society rests.
- The onset of labor and unions, requiring the state, since the second half of the nineteenth century, to increase its intervention in economic and social development.
- In the West, the economic crisis of 1929 accelerated and deepened state intervention and social planning to address the needs of the population.
- The increase in collective aspirations regarding social welfare or quality of life will also necessitate planning the means available for achieving those goals.
- From international dynamics in international forums and organizations, there is a need to address the great problems of mankind.
- From the local level, decentralization processes and the growing involvement of local governments in the process of endogenous development.
All of these and other factors have led to considering planning as one of the central elements in action on any area of political, economic, and social development. The origins of planning are found primarily in the realm of growing economic momentum. Social planning will be the result of two types of influences. On one hand, social planning is developed as a result of the need to understand and change social situations affecting the achievement of the objectives pursued in economic planning. Social planning would be an addition to the target of economic development. On the other hand, as the social content of the state advances, social planning also becomes a specific objective. The purpose of the state does not stop at economic targets.