Perspectives of key stakeholders on essential virtues for good scientific practice in research areas

ABSTRACT

In contrast to the principle-based approach to ethics and research integrity (ERI) training, which stresses the importance of following moral rules, the virtue-based approach focuses on developing good character traits. This study has aimed to explore what virtues mean in scientific practice and their suitable place in ERI training, using a qualitative approach. Two face-to-face focus group discussions were conducted with 21 participants. Heterogeneous purposive sampling was used to reach participants from different countries, organization types (academia, research, publishing, private sector), scientific disciplines and stages of their scientific careers. Data generated during the focus group discussions were analyzed using a reflexive thematic analysis approach, and three main themes were developed. The first theme addressed the relativity of virtue meanings because the participants differed in their definitions and understandings of the concept of virtue. The second theme referred to the acquisition of virtues through social interactions because participants saw virtues mostly as social constructs acquired through socialization and education. The third theme addressed the differences in the importance of particular virtues in research. Participants felt that particular virtues were more important than others because some of them are necessary for responsible research, and some are not.

KEYWORDS:

• Virtue
• ethics
• research integrity
• qualitative research
• ethics training

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Lana Barać, Daniel Pizzolato, Kris Dierickx, Guy Widdershoven, Laura Hartman, Rea Ščepanović and other members of the VIRT²UE project consortium for their valuable contributions to this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the European Commission, grant No. 787580 (H2020-SwafS-2017-1) “Virtue based ethics and Integrity of Research: Train-the-Trainer program for Upholding the principles and practices of the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity”. The funder had no role in the design of this study, during its execution and data interpretation .