A study of children with congenital heart disease seeks to determine risk factors for the condition that may stem from maternal medications taken during pregnancy. The study concludes, surprisingly, that children with congenital heart disease were more likely to have mothers who ate oranges while pregnant than children without congenital heart disease. What kind of error likely led to these implausible findings?
-
Poor interrater reliability
-
Recall bias
-
Sampling bias
-
Selection bias
-
Skewed distribution
Explanation:
Mothers of children with congenital heart disease are more likely to think carefully about every little thing they ate during pregnancy than mothers with children without CHD. This is an example of recall bias, in which knowledge of the presence of CHD in her child affects the way the mother remembers her history.