School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University , Phoenix, AZ, USA.
Division of Statistics and Data Science, RTI International, Research Triangle Park , NC, USA.
Account Res. 2020 Oct;27(7):457-475. doi: 10.1080/08989621.2020.1772060. Epub 2020 Jun 1.
Survey-based studies on research fraud often feature narrow operationalizations of misbehavior and use limited samples. Such factors potentially hinder the development of strategies aimed at reducing the frequency of wrongdoing among researchers. This study asked full-time faculty members in the natural, social, and applied sciences how frequently six types of research fraud (i.e., data fabrication, plagiarism, data falsification, authorship fraud, publication fraud, and grant fraud) occur in their field of study. These data come from mail and online surveys that were administered to a stratified random sample of tenured and tenure-track faculty members (N = 613) at the top 100 research universities in the United States. Factor-analytic modeling demonstrated that the survey items load on the hypothesized latent constructs and also confirmed the presence of a second-order factor. A specific type of authorship fraud - gift authorship - was perceived to be the most prevalent overall. The least common fraud was a form of data fabrication (i.e., creating data from a study that was never actually conducted). The results were largely consistent with previous studies indicating that serious forms of fraud like data fabrication are relatively rare. Future survey-based studies should pay careful attention to the multidimensional nature of research fraud.
基于调查的研究欺诈行为通常对不当行为进行狭义的操作化，并使用有限的样本。这些因素可能会阻碍旨在减少研究人员不当行为频率的策略的发展。本研究询问了自然、社会和应用科学领域的全职教师，六种研究欺诈行为（即数据伪造、抄袭、数据篡改、作者身份欺诈、发表欺诈和资助欺诈）在他们的研究领域中出现的频率。这些数据来自于邮寄和在线调查，调查对象是美国前 100 名研究型大学的终身教职和终身教职轨教职员工（N=613）的分层随机样本。因子分析模型表明，调查项目加载在假设的潜在结构上，并且还证实了二阶因素的存在。一种特定类型的作者身份欺诈 - 礼物作者身份 - 被认为是最普遍的。最不常见的欺诈形式是一种数据伪造形式（即从未实际进行过的研究中创建数据）。结果与先前的研究大致一致，表明像数据伪造这样的严重形式的欺诈相对较少。未来基于调查的研究应仔细注意研究欺诈行为的多维性质。
