The development of a four-tier test to evaluate research integrity training

Abstract

Although higher education institutions across Europe and beyond are paying more and more attention to research integrity training, there are few studies and little evidence on what works and what does not work in such training. One way to overcome this challenge is to evaluate such training with standardised instruments. Experts/trainers have used qualitative approaches to evaluate their research integrity training's successes, but it is difficult to compare their results with others. Sometimes they conduct standardised tests drawn from ethics education or other related fields, but these tests do not assess research integrity's core themes. At present, there is a lack of standardised instruments designed to specifically evaluate success in research integrity training. This article presents a pre-validated instrument for this purpose. Named the P2I questionnaire, it is designed as a four-tier test and based on the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity; in it, testees choose a (scientific) practice to address an issue, justify their decision, and describe how confident they are with their decisions. The development of the P2I questionnaire is outlined in three steps. After describing the research integrity (alternatively, the responsible conduct of research) training successes, the article notes scientific and non-scientific patterns and then concludes with a pre-validated and revised version of the P2I questionnaire. This questionnaire is intended as a first step in a discourse on standardised research integrity measurements and is one step towards an evidence-based improvement of research integrity training.