Langlais Philip J, Bent Blake J
Department of Psychology, Old Dominion University, 130C Mills Godwin Bldg., Norfolk, VA, 23529-0267, USA,
Sci Eng Ethics. 2014 Dec;20(4):897-921. doi: 10.1007/s11948-013-9471-2. Epub 2013 Sep 19.
The development of effective means to enhance research integrity by universities requires baseline measures of individual, programmatic, and institutional factors known to contribute to ethical decision making and behavior. In the present study, master's thesis and Ph.D. students in the fields of biological, health and social sciences at a research extensive university completed a field appropriate measure of research ethical decision making and rated the seriousness of the research issue and importance for implementing the selection response. In addition they were asked to rate their perceptions of the institutional and departmental research climate and to complete a measure of utilitarian and formalistic predisposition. Female students were found to be more ethical in their decision making compared to male students. The research ethical decision measure was found to be related to participants' ethical predisposition and overall perception of organizational and departmental research climate; however, formalism was the only individual predictor to reach statistical significance and none of the individual subscales of the research climate measure were significantly correlated to ethicality. Participants' ratings of the seriousness of the issue were correlated with their ratings of the importance of carrying out their selected response but neither was significantly predictive of the ethicality of their responses. The implications of these findings for the development of more effective training programs and environments for graduate students in research ethics and integrity are discussed.
大学要制定有效的方法来提高研究诚信，就需要对已知会影响道德决策和行为的个人、项目及机构因素进行基线测量。在本研究中，一所研究型综合性大学的生物、健康和社会科学领域的硕士和博士研究生完成了一项适合该领域的研究道德决策测量，并对研究问题的严重性以及实施所选回应的重要性进行了评分。此外，他们还被要求对其对机构和部门研究氛围的看法进行评分，并完成一项功利主义和形式主义倾向的测量。结果发现，与男学生相比，女学生在决策中更具道德性。研究发现，研究道德决策测量与参与者的道德倾向以及对组织和部门研究氛围的总体看法有关；然而，形式主义是唯一达到统计学显著性的个体预测因素，研究氛围测量的各个子量表均与道德性无显著相关性。参与者对问题严重性的评分与他们对执行所选回应重要性的评分相关，但两者均未显著预测其回应的道德性。本文讨论了这些发现对为研究生制定更有效的研究伦理与诚信培训计划和环境的启示。
