We report a study of the dependence of the density of states in hydrogenated amorphous silicon produced under different dc substrate biases. A dependence of the density of states in materials deposited simultaneously onto indium-tin-oxide-coated glass and stainless steel has been found. The same is attributed to sheath plasma differences at the top surface of the growing film. The density of states was determined by the space-charge-limited current method. The universal scaling law is tested for samples having a similar density of states. Attempts were made to correlate the product of the hole mobility and the recombination time for samples deposited in conditions similar to those used in the space-charge-limited current experiments.