{"id":73152,"date":"2022-07-30T11:36:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-30T15:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=73152"},"modified":"2022-08-01T12:07:49","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T16:07:49","slug":"healthy-user-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/healthy-user-bias\/","title":{"rendered":"Healthy-User Bias in Medical Research"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What is healthy-user bias? How can we isolate whether an intervention actually accounts for differences between individuals?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Healthy-user bias occurs in studies that aim to assess the effect of a certain treatment or intervention. Because the people who choose to partake in such studies tend to be significantly different from their peers, it\u2019s difficult to assess the degree to which the intervention (and not the participants\u2019 characteristics) accounts for the findings.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Keep reading to learn about healthy-user bias and how it affects research findings.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-healthy-user-bias\"><strong>Healthy-User Bias<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Samples can be biased because of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/three-types-of-people\/\">types of people<\/a> who engage in the treatment we&#8217;re interested in studying. As Wheelan explains in <em>Naked Statistics<\/em>, the people who choose to engage in whichever activity or habit that we&#8217;re collecting data on are likely to be different in significant ways from people who don&#8217;t engage in the \u201ctreatment.\u201d Therefore, isolating whether a treatment actually accounts for differences between individuals becomes challenging.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, say we were interested in studying the relationship between swimming and health in senior citizens. We would need to be cognizant of the fact that seniors who are swimming are likely different from their average peers outside of the pool as well. Seniors who are taking the time to swim likely take care of their health in other aspects of their life, such as their diet. Additionally, those seniors who are able to swim into old age are likely in better physical condition than their peers to begin with, hence their continued participation in sports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong>Healthy-User Bias in Heart Health<\/strong><br><br>A study published in the <em>British Medical Journal<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/openheart.bmj.com\/content\/openhrt\/4\/1\/e000417.full.pdf\">examined the effect of healthy user bias<\/a> in evaluating the effectiveness of antihypertensive and lipid-lowering medications. Results showed that patients who took the medications were also more likely to have higher levels of income and more education, were more physically active, and were less likely to be smokers than patients who didn\u2019t take the medications.&nbsp;<br><br>The authors of the study cite the importance of assessing medical interventions for healthy user bias because unstudied variables can make interventions seem more successful than they truly are. In this case, for instance, being more physically active and not smoking both have health benefits that could be boosting the drug-takers\u2019 overall health.&nbsp;<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is healthy-user bias? How can we isolate whether an intervention actually accounts for differences between individuals? Healthy-user bias occurs in studies that aim to assess the effect of a certain treatment or intervention. Because the people who choose to partake in such studies tend to be significantly different from their peers, it\u2019s difficult to assess the degree to which the intervention (and not the participants\u2019 characteristics) accounts for the findings.&nbsp; Keep reading to learn about healthy-user bias and how it affects research findings.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":21171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,160,25],"tags":[681],"class_list":["post-73152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-science","category-statistics","tag-naked-statistics","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Healthy-User Bias in Medical Research - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Healthy-user bias occurs in studies that aim to assess the effect of a treatment or an intervention. 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