Selected Ethical Issues in Research and Publication: Perceptions of Health Education Faculty

Abstract

A national random sample of 195 university health education faculty at graduate degree-granting programs completed a 31-item survey with regard to their perceptions of ethical issues in research and publishing. Most respondents were male (57%), tenured (75%), had graduate faculty status (92%), had presented original research at conferences (85%), and had published articles in health education journals (89%). Faculty members were requested to assess whether 21 scenarios dealing with ethical issues in research and publishing were ethical, unethical, questionable, or not an ethical issue. Of the scenarios, 3 were considered ethical and 7 unethical by the majority of respondents. The perceptions of how ethical the remaining 11 scenarios were varied considerably. Perceptions of the ethical scenarios did not differ among respondents by sex, academic rank, years taught as a faculty member, whether the department taught units/classes on research ethics, or whether the respondents were from doctoral-level versus master's-level programs.

Prior Publication and Redundancy in Contemporary Science: Are Authors and Editors at the Crossroads?

“…Similar criticisms of the notion of selfplagiarism can also be found elsewhere on other forums and in various contributions in the ethics and biomedical literature (Andreescu 2013;Bird 2002;Callaham 2014;David 2007David , 2008. Such views are also consistent with the results of surveys indicating respondents' seeming acceptability of self-plagiarism (Price et al 2001;Yank and Barnes 2003).…”

Uncovering published authors' text-borrowing practices: Paraphrasing strategies, sources, and self-plagiarism

“…There seems to be absence of consensus whether conference-to-journal dual publication is acceptable or not and different disciplines may "have loose conventions which are shared via an informal academic apprenticeship model" (Bretag & Carapiet, 2007, p. 1). Second, research findings suggest that large number of authors do not seem to consider textual recycling of one's previous works to be ethical misconduct (Price, Dake, & Islam, 2001;Schein & Paladugu, 2001). Unlike other forms of self-plagiarism, textual recycling is much less well-established or self-evident and different disciplines may expect different degrees of originality in intertextuality.…”

Ethical Issues regarding Service: Perceptions of Health Education Faculty

“…Odum (1988) found that 43% of responding health education department administrators reported formal ethics instruction in their programs, and the other study in 1989found that 72% of programs at the undergraduate level and 56% at the graduate level reported ethics training (Drass & Feldman, 1989). In more recent studies, Price et al (2001) found that 50% of respondents' institutions offered the teaching of research ethics to graduate students and Telljohann et al (2001) found that health education ethics was taught as a unit or a class at the undergraduate or graduate levelat 75% of the respondents' institutions.…”

“…A comprehensive examination of the published literaturein thesethree areas revealed a wealth of articles dealing with the areas of research and teaching by university professors, but only one publication regarding service. In addition, there were published articles dealing withethical issues in research (Malone, 1998;Murray, Gillese, Lennon, Mercer, & Robinson, 1996;Price, Dake, & Islam, 2001) and teaching (Iammarino, O'Rourke, Pigg, & Weinberg, 1989;Matthews, 1991;Telljohann, Price, & Dake, 2001), but none pertainingto ethics and service activity.…”