Methods for Research on Research Integrity: Doing Research on Sensitive Topics

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margot L. Iverson ◽  
Mark S. Frankel
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Kalichman

Abstract Background: Research on research integrity has tended to focus on frequency of research misconduct and factors that might induce someone to commit research misconduct. A definitive answer to the first question has been elusive, but it remains clear that any research misconduct is too much. Answers to the second question are so diverse, it might be productive to ask a different question: What about how research is done allows research misconduct to occur?Methods: With that question in mind, research integrity officers (RIOs) of the 62 members of the American Association of Universities were invited to complete a brief survey about their most recent instance of a finding of research misconduct. Respondents were asked whether one or more good practices of research (e.g., openness and transparency, keeping good research records) were present in their case of research misconduct.Results: Twenty-four (24) of the respondents (39% response rate) indicated they had dealt with at least one finding of research misconduct and answered the survey questions. Over half of these RIOs reported that their case of research misconduct had occurred in an environment in which at least nine of the ten listed good practices of research were deficient.Conclusions: These results are not evidence for a causal effect of poor practices, but it is arguable that committing research misconduct would be more difficult if not impossible in research environments adhering to good practices of research.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice M. Biggane ◽  
Maria Olsen ◽  
Paula R. Williamson

Abstract Background The importance of patient and public involvement (PPI) in the design and conduct of health research projects is gaining widespread recognition; however, it is still a developing area. Furthermore, PPI in methodological health research can help increase research value Thus, it is of great importance that researchers, especially early stage researchers continue to discuss and learn about the future challenges and opportunities of PPI. Objective With this commentary, we aim to disseminate i) key messages from a recent PPI training event and ii) discuss what early stage researchers (ESRs) in the “Methods in Research on Research” (MiRoR) project can do to improve our current and future work by considering and incorporating PPI. Main body The latest MiRoR network meeting held at the University of Split in Croatia (2nd-3rd October), included a PPI training session with presentations from Mr. Stephens a patient, about “Waste in research” and Dr. Westmore a funder on “Research integrity”, followed by smaller round-table discussions. This provided early stage researchers (ESRs) with an opportunity to discuss and explore the benefits and challenges of PPI in research, and the appropriate questions and research that is required for improving the implementation of PPI in clinical research. Conclusion As with intervention research, PPI is also important for methodological research since this will help to increase both the value, integrity and quality of research. By providing early stage researchers with appropriate educational, interactive and real-world training, this will introduce the various merits and challenges associated with PPI in early-stage research.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noémie Aubert Bonn ◽  
Wim Pinxten

AbstractIn the past decades, increasing visibility of research misconduct scandals created momentum for discourses on research integrity to such an extent that the topic became a field of research itself. Yet, a comprehensive overview of research in the field is still missing. Here we describe methods, trends, publishing patterns, and impact of a decade of research on research integrity.To give a comprehensive overview of research on research integrity, we first systematically searched SCOPUS, Web of Science, and PubMed for relevant articles published in English between 2005 and 2015. We then classified each relevant article according to its topic, several methodological characteristics, its general focus and findings, and its citation impact.We included 986 articles in our analysis. We found that the body of literature on research integrity is growing in importance, and that the field is still largely dominated by non-empirical publications. Within the bulk of empirical records (N=342), researchers and students are most often studied, but other actors and the social context in which they interact, seem to be overlooked. The few empirical articles that examined determinants of misconduct found that problems from the research system (e.g., pressure, competition) were most likely to cause inadequate research practices. Paradoxically, the majority of empirical articles proposing approaches to foster integrity focused on techniques to build researchers’ awareness and compliance rather than techniques to change the research system.Our review highlights the areas, methods, and actors favoured in research on research integrity, and reveals a few blindspots. Involving non-researchers and reconnecting what is known to the approaches investigated may be the first step to generate executable knowledge that will allow us to increase the success of future approaches.A word from the authorsWe find important to mention that this manuscript underwent peer review and was rejected from the following journals:PLOS ONESubmitted 19th December 2017Peer-review and rejection received 26th June 2018.Journal of Science and Engineering Ethics (JSEE)Submitted 18th August 2018Peer-review response with major revision request received 9th September 2019Revision submitted 24th October 218Rejection received 27th December 2018We regret not having submitted this preprint before our first submission. Nonetheless, now after over one year in submission processes, we thought that we should make this manuscript and its data available as a pre-print before undergoing further submissions.In order to promote transparency however, we asked both journal whether anonymous reviews could be added alongside this pre-print to ensure that readers are informed of the issues that disqualified our manuscript.PLOS ONE agreed for us to share the anonymous reviews which are now available — together with our itemized changes and responses — in the ‘Online Resource 5 – Peer Review Report’. We thank the editors of the Journal of Science and Engineering Ethics and the integrity team of Springer Nature for thoroughly discussing our request, but unfortunately, given the closed peer review policy at Springer Nature, we were unable to provide information about the peer review from the Journal of Science and Engineering Ethics.We advise our readers to look at the peer-review and be aware of the challenges and limitations attached with our work. Of course, we welcome comments and contributions to make our work better.Sincerely,Noémie Aubert Bonn and Wim Pinxten


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 338-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noémie Aubert Bonn ◽  
Wim Pinxten

Research on research integrity has become a field of its own; yet, a comprehensive overview the field is still missing. We systematically searched SCOPUS, Web of Science, and PubMed for relevant articles published between 2005 and 2015. We extracted the topic, methodology, focus, and citations from each articles. From the 986 articles included, only 342 report empirical data. Empirical papers predominantly targeted researchers and students. Although empirical articles questioning causes for misconduct mostly blamed research systems (e.g., pressure, competition) for detrimental research practices, articles proposing approaches to foster integrity focused on researchers’ awareness and compliance rather than on system changes. Involving nonresearchers and reconnecting what is known to what is proposed may help research on research integrity move forward.


Author(s):  
Zaleha Othman ◽  
Fathilatul Zakimi Abdul Hamid

Despite the growing interest in qualitative research and discussion of ethics, there has been little focus in the literature on the specific ethical dilemmas faced by researchers. In this paper, we share our fieldwork experiences regarding the ethical dilemmas that we encountered while doing research on a sensitive topic. Specifically, we share some of the ethical dilemmas, that is, concerning confidentiality, anonymity, legitimacy, controversial data, interpretation and off-the-record data, which emerged from the research. Most importantly, this paper shares ideas concerning how researchers might deal with ethical issues while preserving their integrity in the research process. Overall, this paper suggests approaches that qualitative researchers can adopt when doing research on sensitive topics. The paper contributes towards closing an existing gap in the literature, making visible the challenges frequently faced by qualitative researchers, that is, the vulnerability of researchers while preserving research integrity. Finally, this paper concludes with the suggestion that ethical dilemmas are part of the research process in doing qualitative research. However, it is suggested that future research should focus on ethical issues from the perspective of the researchers as well as the respondents.


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