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Baselining assumptions, stereotypes, and expectations
The goal of Human Centered Design Research is to gain new insights and understandings of the subject group. Which begs the non-trivial question: How does design research know when it has found something? Or how does it know that it is revealing new experiences as opposed to creating fictions.
At the outset of the research it is necessary for the design team to list and explore their assumptions, stereotypes, and expectations. Both to make them obvious, and to have a baseline of thought about the research group. After completing secondary research it is advisable to again list the assumptions, stereotypes, and exceptions that secondary research suggests will be encountered. Besides making assumptions evident, these baselines are also useful for checking new thoughts against. Did you know it before? Is it non-obvious? Do new ideas fit into what was expected? Are they an expression of a preexisting assumption? Does this new thought fill a whole in what was known before? Did it come from your process? Researchers should not hesitate to expand the secondary research if the primary research heads in unexpected ways.
In practice these questions and checks are done internally or come about naturally in group discussions. It is a good practice to also regularly discuss your findings and insights with others to get outside opinions and avoid self-delusion.