Problem: Can you give us an example to help what you explained concerning observer bias? That is, can you say more about how preconceived notions about boys vs. girls might play a role in classroom observations?
When assessing the same phenomenon, it is possible to encounter independent observers assessing similar phenomena, interrater reliability is the degree of agreeableness among these raters which shows the research is replicable and consistent. For instance, in research on classroom behavior on the impact of teaching materials on the students, the raters may have similar evaluations and results which show that there was consistency during the classroom evaluation. According to Bordens and Abbott (2022), inter-rater reliability is important to all reviewers because it helps them establish research consistency and how it will be applied in the interpretation of the cross-team review.
Observer bias is a common occurrence in research, it happens when the attitudes and expectations of the observer play a vital role in influencing the process of data recording (Jeyaraman et al., 2020). In the classroom observation example, the observer may go to the class with predetermined attitudes and expectations that boys are usually more disruptive in class than girls, therefore, throughout the observation period, the observer is likely to unconsciously record boy's behavior more critically compared to girls.
Nonetheless, observational research is very crucial and plays a key role in research because it increases credibility, through interrater reliability, observers are less likely to be biased and the validity and credibility of the research are likely to be improved. Therefore, if two or more researchers have a similar observation on a particular phenomenon, it is safe to say that the research is dependable and objective. Observational research is also very important because it increases accuracy, when the observer bias is very low in the research, the study is likely to provide an accurate and reflect on the true findings of the research being conducted.
There are several ways in which observational research can be improved, one of the most common ways is by ensuring that the interrater reliability is high and observer bias is reduced. Some of the ways through which researchers can achieve this are by providing the observers with ideas on the need to have a mutual understanding and ensure that there is reduced variability in the observational results. There are many ways through which interrater reliability is analyzed and reported, they include using percentage agreement which takes into account the percentage of times that the observers agree on a phenomenon. Another tool is Cohen's Kappa which measures the number of times agreement occurred by chance in research.