How do you know you’re selecting the right data samples to investigate? Is your metric the right one? How does your data relate to the relevant human rights law?
It may be tempting to use data that is cleaner or easier to access, but this may also be misleading, or more easily taken out of context, or may miss the bigger picture.
For instance: focusing on a list of killed human rights defenders may overlook or even downplay tortured individuals, or individuals that have been detained, displaced, or silenced by repressive situations.
To check for data selection issues, ask yourself if the data is valid (does it measure the right you are assessing?), reliable (was the data collection process dependable?), and unbiased (was it collected by a group that respects scientific standards or by a group with a conflict of interest?).