Seeking help as a strategy for ethical and professional decision-making in research: Perspectives of researchers from East Asia and the United States

ABSTRACT

Background: A person’s cultural background shapes how they interpret and navigate problems. Given that large numbers of international researchers work and train in the U.S. we sought to better understand how researchers use the decision-making strategy of seeking help to navigate ethical and professional challenges.Methods: Participants (N = 300) were researchers working or training in the U.S. who were born in East Asia (EA) or born in the U.S. They completed a screening survey; then a subset completed think-aloud interviews (n = 66) focused on how they would respond to three hypothetical research scenarios.Results: Thematic analysis of the transcripts showed that seeking help was a commonly endorsed strategy, with some nuances between groups. Themes included seeking help in the form of getting advice, seeking someone to help solve the problem, and gathering information. Endorsement of the seeking help strategy frequently depended on participants’ relationships; desiring to seek help from people they trusted. Notably, EA participants tended to prefer seeking help in ways that avoided reputational harm to others.Conclusion: A better understanding of how researchers from different cultural backgrounds use decision-making strategies can inform how to make educational programs more inclusive and comprehensive to more effectively develop researchers’ ethical and professional decision-making skills.

KEYWORDS:

• Responsible conduct of research training
• professional decision-making
• research ethics
• seeking help
• SMART strategies

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Sophia Pan, Emma Zijlstra, and Mihi Dormeville for their assistance with this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declaration

This research was approved by the Washington University School of Medicine IRB (#202007083).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [NSF 2024345] and National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences [NCATS UL1TR002345]. The authors have no financial or proprietary interests in any material discussed in this article.