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Session Summary

Division I Pre-Conference Workshop: Did I Do the Right Thing? Questionable Research Practices in Professions Education (Registration Required)

Wed, April 7, 12:00 to 1:30pm EDT (12:00 to 1:30pm EDT), Division I, Division I Pre-Conference Mentoring

Session Type: Pre-Conference Mentoring Session

Abstract

To attend this session, please add it to your registration. If you have already registered for the Annual Meeting, add it to your registration: Log in to your AERA account and click My AERA at the top of the page. On the My AERA page, scroll down to the 2021 Annual Meeting. Click View and Add Events to Existing Registration. For assistance, contact Registration Support at [email protected] or phone: (800) 893-7950 or (484) 751-5136.

Research practices tend to be taught and discussed as unambiguously ‘right or wrong.’ In some cases, this distinction is straightforward, but in many cases the line between right and wrong is fuzzy. The decisions and actions in these latter cases constitute ethical gray areas, otherwise known as questionable research practices (QRPs). A recent international survey found that 92% of health professions researchers had engaged in one or more QRPs, including non-compliance with institutional review board procedures, poor data management, insufficient respect and care for participants, or unsuitable authorship and publishing practices (Artino et al., 2019). Furthermore, a follow-up study of authorship practices found that formal authorship guidelines are inadequate when it comes to mitigating questionable authorship practices (Maggio et al., 2019). In addition, these findings indicate that researchers generally recognized the shades of gray in authorship decision making. For example, they acknowledge that flexible authorship practices are sometimes driven by benevolent goals; whereas at other times such practices result from researcher vulnerabilities outside their control (e.g., gender, experience level, and institutional culture). In short, when mired in the details of a study and pushed by publication and other institutional pressures, researchers may find more ambiguity in efforts to ‘do the right thing’ than they expect.

Sometimes, the negative consequences of QRPs can seem minimal, from an individual’s perspective, but they may have broad negative consequences for the scientific enterprise. In other situations, the consequences of QRPs can be significant for both the individual and the scientific enterprise – harming, for example, individual careers, as well as knowledge discovery and science policy (Maggio et al., 2018). This interactive session will explore some of these QRPs, with the goal of helping researchers identify when a consequential breach of ethics or integrity is at stake and what strategies the professions education community can use to guide researchers toward more ethical decisions and actions.

Learning Objectives:
Participants will be able to:
• Define QRPs and identify them in cases
• Describe the prevalence of QRPs in HPE
• Discuss strategies for making ethical decisions given the circumstances
• Identify and mitigate truly harmful QRPs

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