How you define a concept silently biases which populations your study selects.

Evidence

Concept construction issues are absolutely crucial because the concept structure used interacts in various, usually hidden, ways with theories and hypotheses that researchers want to test. In this way we point out a type of selection bias that stems from the manner in which we define our concepts. Given that there are various ways to construct a concept, and hence to select a population, different concept structures can then bias the results because they choose different populations for analysis. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts, 1009

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the archive-epistemology material in Along the Archival Grain, where filing and categorization practices covertly determine which events are recorded at all.