In recent years, we have seen a new concern with ethics training for research and development professionals. Although ethics training has become more common, the effectiveness of the training being provided is open to question. In the present effort, a new ethics training course was developed that stresses the importance of the strategies people apply to make sense of ethical problems. The effectiveness of this training was assessed in a sample of 59 doctoral students working in the biological and social sciences using a pre-post design with follow-up, and a series of ethical decisionmaking measures serving as the outcome variable. Results showed that this training not only led to sizable gains in ethical decision-making, but that these gains were maintained over time. The implications of these findings for ethics training in the sciences are discussed. Keywordsintegrity; ethics; training; evaluation; sensemaking Notorious events, ranging from the death of study participants to the falsification of data (Kimmelman, 2004; Nature, 2006;Marshall, 1996) have served to remind the scientific community of the importance of ethics. As dramatic as these cases may be, the best available evidence indicates that less noteworthy, but still significant, ethical breeches, such as conflicts of interest and data trimming, may be more pervasive in the sciences than is commonly assumed (Martinson, Anderson, & de Vries, 2005;Steneck, 2004). Recognition of the problems posed by these ethical breeches has led to the proposal of a number of remedies -ranging from the establishment of professional codes of conduct to more effective student mentoring (National Institute of Medicine, 2002).Prominent among these suggested remedies has been training in the responsible conduct of research (e.g., Chen, 2003;Coughlin, Katz, & Mattison, 1999;De Las Fuentes, Willmuth, & Yarrow, 2005). In fact, the National Institutes of Health now mandates such training for all investigators it supports (Dalton, 2000). Although training in research ethics has become a widespread panacea for the problems posed by scientific integrity, or the lack thereof, one must ask a basic question: How well does training in research integrity work?Even bearing in mind the many issues that impinge on effective program evaluation (Kraiger, Ford, & Salas, 1993;Sims, 1993), it seems reasonable to question the efficacy of ethics training. An illustration of this point may be found by considering the many studies conducted examining the effects of training on one key criterion -ethical decision-making (Loe, Ferrell, Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Michael D. Mumford, Department of Psychology, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73019 or mmumford@ou.edu.. & Mansfield, 2000;O'Fallon & Butterfield, 2005). Some studies have provided evidence indicating that training may lead to improvements in ethical decision-making among scientists (e.g., Al-Jalahma & Fakhroo, 2004;Bebeau & Thoma, 1994;Clarkeburn, Downie, & Matthew, 2002). Other studies, however, sugge...

Ethical decision making measures are widely applied as the principal dependent variable used in studies of research integrity. However, evidence bearing on the internal and external validity of these measures is not available. In this study, ethical decision making measures were administered to 102 graduate students in the biological, health, and social sciences, along with measures examining exposure to ethical breaches and the severity of punishments recommended. The ethical decision making measure was found to be related to exposure to ethical events and the severity of punishments awarded. The implications of these findings for the application of ethical decision making measures are discussed.

It is commonly held that early career experiences influence ethical behavior. One way early career experiences might operate is to influence the decisions people make when presented with problems that raise ethical concerns. To test this proposition, 102 first-year doctoral students were asked to complete a series of measures examining ethical decision making along with a series of measures examining environmental experiences and climate perceptions. Factoring of the environmental measure yielded five dimensions: professional leadership, poor coping, lack of rewards, limited competitive pressure, and poor career direction. Factoring of the climate inventory yielded four dimensions: equity, interpersonal conflict, occupational engagement, and work commitment. When these dimensions were used to predict performance on the ethical decision-making task, it was found that the environmental dimensions were better predictors than the climate dimensions. The implications of these findings for research on ethical conduct are discussed.

Differences across fields and experience levels are frequently considered in discussions of ethical decision-making and ethical behavior. In the present study, doctoral students in the health, biological, and social sciences completed measures of ethical decision-making. The effects of field and level of experience with respect to ethical decision-making, metacognitive reasoning strategies, social-behavioral responses, and exposure to unethical events were examined. Social and biological scientists performed better than health scientists with respect to ethical decision-making. Furthermore, the ethical decision-making of health science students decreased as experience increased. Moreover, these effects appeared to be linked to the specific strategies underlying participants' ethical decision-making. The implications of these findings for ethical decision-making are discussed.

Objective: The digital revolution is changing the manner in which patients communicate with their health care providers, yet many patients still lack access to communication technology. We conducted this study to evaluate access to, use of, and preferences for using communication technology among a predominantly low-income patient population. We determined whether access, use, and preferences were associated with type of health insurance, sex, age, and ethnicity.Methods: In 2011, medical student researchers administered questionnaires to patients of randomly selected physicians within 9 primary care clinics in the Residency Research Network of Texas. Surveys addressed access to and use of cell phones and home computers and preferences for communicating with health care providers.Results: In this sample of 533 patients (77% response rate), 448 (84%) owned a cell phone and 325 (62%) owned computers. Only 48% reported conducting Internet searches, sending and receiving E-mails, and looking up health information on the Internet. Older individuals, those in government sponsored insurance programs, and individuals from racial/ethnic minority groups had the lowest levels of technology adoption. In addition, more than 60% of patients preferred not to send and receive health information over the Internet, by instant messaging, or by text messaging. The digital revolution is changing the manner in which patients communicate with their health care providers. Policymakers, such as those who conceived of the patient-centered medical home, are working to bridge the digital divide between practitioners and patients by rewarding clinics using health communication technologies.1,2 For instance, family medicine clinics with interactive websites allowing patients to view medical records, view test results, renew prescriptions, request appointments, and send secure messages are required for advanced certification levels.3 Communication technologies such as cell phones now provide patients with the capacity to monitor diseases, communicate with their care providers, send and receive personal health information, and receive health promotion messages in a timely and inexpensive manner. [4][5][6][7] This article was externally peer reviewed.