Assessing the climate for research ethics in labs: Development and validation of a brief measure

ABSTRACT

The environment researchers work in influences their ethical decisions and behavior. A “climate” for research ethics in a research lab exists when members of the lab perceive that the group values and is committed to principles of research ethics. In this study, we aimed to develop a short, reliable and valid measure assessing perceptions of climate for research ethics at the lab level. The resulting measure, Lab Climate for Research Ethics, was developed using standard scale development guidelines. In a large sample of postdoctoral researchers (N = 570), we found preliminary evidence that the new measure has adequate internal consistency reliability. It was also correlated with an existing measure of climate for research ethics and was not correlated with social desirability, demonstrating evidence of construct validity. The new measure can be used in a variety of contexts, including research administrators seeking information about climate within labs across an institution and researchers who study lab environments.

KEYWORDS:

• Research integrity
• research ethics
• research environment
• climate
• measurement

Acknowledgments

We thank Mary Quandt and Emily Schenk for their assistance with recruitment.

Data sharing

The data used in the study is available on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/9t27h/). Permission to use the Lab Climate for Research Ethics measure can be requested at https://bioethicsresearch.org/research-services/testing-services/.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We conducted correlational analysis to determine if any of the demographic variables were associated with the Lab Climate for Research Ethics scale. Of all the demographic variables, only the following were significantly correlated: holding a professional doctorate (i.e., an MD), r(568) = .127, p =.002; holding a research doctorate (i.e., a Ph.D.), r(568) = −.158, p < .001; total years doing research, r(568) = −.122,p = .004; conducting social or behavioral human subjects research, r(568) = .145, p = .001; conducting animal research, r(568) = −.130, p = .002; and conducting research in a wet lab, r(568) = −.197, p < .001.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Office of Research Integrity under Grant ORI2018000286 and the National Human Genome Research Institute under Grant K01HG008990.