The authors review the impact of research hypotheses and subject characteristics on the validity of observations. The research published over a 2-year span in 4 special education journals is then reviewed to ascertain the extent to which observer bias is a problem in special education research. It was found that about half of the research articles ran substantial risk of biased observation; in about three-fourths of these articles, no precautions were taken by the researchers to safeguard the validity of their observations.
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