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Research integrity

Ensuring the rigor of research

Research integrity requires more than just avoiding research misconduct or the mistreatment of research subjects. It requires us to pay attention to everything about research quality. We cannot have high-quality research without research integrity. Since 2001, our research integrity program has developed an international reputation for promoting the integrity of academic research.

The settings in which researchers conduct research can strongly influence their behavior. We are studying whether these factors promote or discourage research integrity:

  • Organizational characteristics: The perceptions and influence of work demands, rewards and social support
  • Career incentive systems: The effects of “publish and procure funding or perish” reward systems; conflicts of interest resulting from soft-money salary support models
  • Structural arrangements of science: Dual roles of graduate students and postdoctoral fellow positions as trainees and students, but also as inexpensive, highly trained labor supply

Investigator

Key projects

Harmful research practices

The projects “Work-Strain, Career Course and Research Integrity,” and “Procedural Justice, Identity, and Research Integrity” found many instances of harmful research practices among academic researchers. We pointed out connections between these behaviors and certain characteristics of organizational research settings.

Development of the Survey of Organizational Research Climates (SOuRCe)

We developed the first validated survey instrument for assessing research integrity in academic research settings–SOuRCe. After initial development by Carol R. Thrush at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, a preliminary version of the instrument was developed through consultation with colleagues at University of Wisconsin-Madison, Penn-State University and Michigan State University. It was part of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI)-funded, Council of Graduate Schools’ Project on Scholarly Integrity.

Implementation of the SOuRCe

We worked with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to conduct a National Institutes of Health and ORI-funded study that led to final development and validation of the SOuRCe. The SOuRCe is now an online engine for survey fielding and report generation. It provides a cost-effective, efficient and high-quality method for university leaders. They can assess the research integrity of their local organizational environments.

Trial testing of the SOuRCe

We tested the use of the SOuRCe as a reporting and feedback intervention to improve research integrity climates. This took place in U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs research settings nationwide. The SOuRCe has been implemented in at least nine large, research-intensive universities in the United States and other countries.

Addressing sexual harassment and other misuses of power in research settings

In collaboration with partners at the American Geophysical Union and the National Center for Professional & Research Ethics at the University of Illinois, we obtained a three-year grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to develop tools to address sexual harassment and other misuses of power in higher education settings. We will develop and disseminate an extension of the SOuRCe to include organizational climates that address bullying, harassment, and other misuses of power that can undermine researchers and the quality and integrity of their work.

Key publications