Information bias refers to the ways in
which the farmer voice is shaped by the information used
to elicit that voice. Information bias is particularly important where respondents have little knowledge of or experience with the technology under discussion, as is often the
case in studies of GM crops. Beyond information bias is
what we may call individual bias. Voice claims characteristically solicit opinions on an individual basis, whereas
farmer opinions on technologies emerge in part through a
group dynamic that emerges through actual interaction
with the technology. Last is the problem of short-term bias.
Voice claims privilege short-term questions such as whether the farmer would adopt a technology, obscuring the
more difficult-to-specify potential longer-term effects of
the technology.