Good friend or good student? An interview study of perceived conflicts between personal and academic integrity among students in three European countries

Goddiksen, Mads; Quinn, Una; Kovács, Nóra; Lund, Thomas Bøker; Sandøe, Peter; Varga, Orsolya; Johansen, Mikkel Willum

doi:10.1080/08989621.2020.1826319

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 17 publications

(15 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The study was based on results from a questionnaire-based survey undertaken as part of the project INTEGRITY, which aimed to map academic integrity within the European Economic Area (EEA) across three educational levels [ 24 , 25 ]. Prior to the survey, a qualitative interview study with n = 72 students including n = 36 PhD students was performed (details in [ 26 ]). S1 File presents the part of the questionnaire relevant to the present study.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“The person in power told me to”—European PhD students’ perspectives on guest authorship and good authorship practice

et al. 2023

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Questionable authorship practices in scientific publishing are detrimental to research quality and management. The existing literature dealing with the prevalence, and perceptions, of such practices has focused on the medical sciences, and on experienced researchers. In contrast, this study investigated how younger researchers (PhD students) from across the faculties view fair authorship attribution, their experience with granting guest authorships to more powerful researchers and their reasons for doing so. Data for the study were collected in a survey of European PhD students. The final dataset included 1,336 participants from five European countries (Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Portugal, and Switzerland) representing all major disciplines. Approximately three in ten reported that they had granted at least one guest authorship to “a person in power”. Half of these indicated that they had done so because they had been told to do so by the person in power. Participants from the medical, natural and technical sciences were much more likely to state that they had granted a guest authorship than those from other faculties. We identified four general views about what is sufficient for co-authorship. There were two dominant views. The first (inclusive view) considered a broad range of contributions to merit co-authorship. The second (strongly writing-oriented) emphasised that co-authors must have written a piece of the manuscript text. The inclusive view dominated in the natural, technical, and medical sciences. Participants from other faculties were more evenly distributed between the inclusive and writing oriented view. Those with an inclusive view were most likely to indicate that they have granted a guest authorship. According to the experiences of our participants, questionable authorship practices are prevalent among early-career researchers, and they appear to be reinforced through a combination of coercive power relations and dominant norms in some research cultures, particularly in the natural, technical, and medical sciences.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“The person in power told me to”—European PhD students’ perspectives on guest authorship and good authorship practice

et al. 2023

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…eu), which aimed to explore academic integrity issues among European students from upper secondary to PhD level. This paper will focus solely on data on the upper secondary students (see Goddiksen et al 2021 for a report on a qualitative study done as a preparation for the present study).…”

Section: Planning Of Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A related line of research shows that undergraduate students often face grey-zone situations where acting with integrity requires context-sensitive judgement rather than the straightforward application of black and white rules (Childers and Bruton 2016;Goddiksen et al 2021). Although actions such as deleting deviating datapoints appear to be transgressive, there are cases where they can be seen to be justifiable, or even required, when the specific context is considered in more detail.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lack of ethics or lack of knowledge? European upper secondary students’ doubts and misconceptions about integrity issues

et al. 2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Plagiarism and other transgressions of the norms of academic integrity appear to be a persistent problem among upper secondary students. Numerous surveys have revealed high levels of infringement of what appear to be clearly stated rules. Less attention has been given to students’ understanding of academic integrity, and to the potential misconceptions and false beliefs that may make it difficult for them to comply with existing rules and handle complex real-life situations.In this paper we report findings from a survey of European upper secondary students’ views on issues relating to academic integrity. We relate these findings to the students’ training about academic integrity, self-reported level of questionable behavior and country of study.A total of 1654 students at 51 institutions located in 6 European countries participated in the study. The participants generally believed they had a good understanding of the rules applying to them and knew how to behave in compliance with norms of academic integrity. The results indicate, however, that often, in practice, this belief was mistaken. Many students had an inadequate understanding of core elements of academic integrity. They were uncertain about how to act, and they struggled in the handling of complex situations that require context-sensitive judgement. While some differences between countries were identified, they were modest and exhibited no clear pattern. Our results also suggest that reducing students’ level of uncertainty and, to a lesser degree, improving their level of knowledge could lead them to engage less in certain types of questionable behaviours. Surprisingly, the effect of academic training is modest and ambiguous. The study also confirms that perception of peer behaviour has the strongest association with student engagement in questionable behaviours. Thus, academic integrity at the upper secondary level cannot be explained simply in terms of individual ethics or knowledge.

show abstract

“…We know from previous studies that young researchers are generally reluctant to report misconduct and detrimental practices to relevant authorities (Horbach et al 2020). However, more are willing to react in other ways, for instance by confronting the perpetrator (Goddiksen et al 2021). Reluctance to act often stems from either a lack of perceived responsibility (discussed in Section 3.1.2) or from a fear of negative consequences, which could either be in the form of ruining a relationship with a colleague or supervisor or fear that reacting will be damaging to his/her career (Horbach et al 2020).…”

Section: Will and Couragementioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching phronesis in a research integrity course

Goddiksen

Gjerris

2022

FACETS

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

More and more research institutions are implementing courses in research integrity (RI). Recent studies indicate that teachers of RI courses are increasingly adopting a “phronetic” approach to their teaching, where the focus is on nurturing values and practical wisdom—what Aristotle called phronesis. When adopting a phronetic approach, it is important to understand what phronesis in relation to RI entails and how and to what extent an RI course can contribute to the development of research phronesis. This paper contains a practice-based discussion of the realistic aims of RI courses and a first step towards a specification of the skill set necessary for developing research phronesis drawing on experiences from the PhD courses on Responsible Conduct of Research at the University of Copenhagen. We discuss the limited extent to which research phronesis can be taught in short courses and examine the broader implications of this for the role of RI courses in the training of good researchers.

show abstract

Good friend or good student? An interview study of perceived conflicts between personal and academic integrity among students in three European countries

Abstract: Johansen (2021) Good friend or good student? An interview study of perceived conflicts between personal and academic integrity among students in three European countries,

Cited by 8 publications

References 17 publications

“The person in power told me to”—European PhD students’ perspectives on guest authorship and good authorship practice

“The person in power told me to”—European PhD students’ perspectives on guest authorship and good authorship practice

Lack of ethics or lack of knowledge? European upper secondary students’ doubts and misconceptions about integrity issues

Teaching phronesis in a research integrity course

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About