Michael D. Mumford - US grants

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The success of the scientific enterprise ultimately depends on the integrity of the scholars conducting the research. Accordingly, there is a need to understand the organizational or situational factors that influence integrity in scientific work, in order to provide guidance about the kind of organizational actions that might be taken to minimize incidents of misconduct. This study examines the influences of situational factors operating at three different levels on unethical decisionmaking. Additionally, the relationships of individual attributes to integrity are examined, particularly as they interact with situational influences to impact integrity. Three hundred advanced graduate students will be asked to participate in a study of scientific problem solving. These graduate students will be drawn from five to ten departments in three broad areas: health sciences, biological sciences, and social sciences. The overall sample will comprise 100 graduate students in each area. Students will be asked to complete a series of measures assessing situational influences on integrity operating at individual, group and organizational levels. Responses to these measures will describe the environment of participants' departments, research groups, and individual educational experiences. Participants will also complete three work sample assessments of integrity and inventories assessing various individual attributes such as cognitive ability and personality. Correlations of the situational factor and individual attribute scores with the work sample integrity assessments will be used to identify situational variables that have the strongest relationships to integrity. A general structural model will be developed to describe how situational variables operate to influence integrity related decisions within and across different scientific disciplines.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A number of well publicized cases involving breaches of normative behavior have lead to a new concern with the integrity of the research enterprise. A review of the state of recent initiatives to address research integrity by the National Research Council recommended three key efforts: 1) develop measures for the assessment of research integrity, 2) identify the environmental variables or career events that influence research integrity, and 3) develop effective educational interventions. In the present effort, two studies will be conducted; one examining graduate research assistants and one examining working professionals in the health, biological, and social sciences who are participating in responsible conduct of research training. Participants will be asked to complete three measures of ethical decision making tailored to scientific work. These measures will be used both to identify the critical components of effective training and to identify the work climate variables and career events that influence ethical decision making. The data gathered in this effort will also be used to validate a set of prototype instruments for the assessment of research integrity and the environmental variables that influence integrity across researchers' careers.

This award is made under Ethics Education in Science and Engineering (NSF 05-532). The ethical conduct of investigators is critical to both progress in the sciences and public support for the scientific enterprise. Although many interventions exist that might be used to enhance ethical conduct, instructional interventions remain the most common. Unfortunately, these instructional interventions often have limited impact because they are not embedded in the day-to-day practices of the field and the strategies people apply in resolving ethical issues encountered in the course of their work. The intent of the proposed effort is to develop and evaluate a professional practice model for research ethics education. Initially, qualitative anthropological analyses of the professional practices and issue resolution strategies applied in a multi-disciplinary applied research center will be conducted. The results of these observational analyses will be used to identify day-to-day ethical issues arising in multidisciplinary centers, and social cognitive strategies used to resolve the work problems posed by these issues. Based on this information, an instructional program will be developed that is based on: 1) key actions leading to problem resolution, 2) effective strategies for executing these actions, and 3) practical steps that will support effective application of these strategies. This training will be delivered at four institutions participating in a multi-disciplinary center. The training will use an embedded instructional approach, involving both students and faculty in cooperative learning exercises intended to illustrate and provide practice in the application of effective strategies for resolving ethical issues arising in a center context. The effectiveness of this program will be evaluated using a multiple-site, multi-method approach that appraises program results with respect to individual-level outcomes (e.g., knowledge structures, decision-making) group-level outcomes (e.g., local site ethical climate, negative events), organizational-level outcomes (e.g., cross-site collaborations, new projects initiated by the center). If positive results are obtained in this multi-level, multi-measure evaluation effort, the program will be disseminated to other interdisciplinary centers and relevant fields in science and engineering.
Intellectual Merit: This effort will provide an initial test of whether ethics education models based on day-to-day professional practice will provide a basis for the development of more effective educational programs. Additionally, this effort will help to identify the unique ethical issues arising in large multi-disciplinary applied research centers and the kind of strategies that can be applied to resolve these issues. Finally, this effort will provide measures for assessing ethical conduct, illustrating the impact of ethical conduct on individual, groups and organizational outcomes.
Broader Impacts: The proposed effort will provide a new type of model curriculum that might be used to provide an alternative to the curricula currently being applied in ethics education in science and engineering fields. Additionally, key strategies for resolving the ethical issues encountered in applied multi-disciplinary research centers will be identified. An ethical education curriculum and evaluation measures will be developed for the three fields (meteorology, computer science, and electrical engineering) involved in the center being studied. Finally, new procedures for developing a curriculum addressing day-to-day ethical issues encountered in professional practice will be identified.

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Ethical decision-making is commonly considered critical to understanding integrity in research settings. Unfortunately, available models of how scientists think about ethical issues have proven unsatisfactory. In the present effort we argue that ethical decision-making occurs in complex, ill-defined situations where the decisions that an individual makes depends on several key processes, including: 1) framing, 2) emotional regulation, 3) forecasting, 4) self-reflection, and 5) sensemaking. Strategies contributing to effective application of each of these five processes will be identified in an initial series of experimental studies in samples of undergraduates. The generality of these conclusions will then be tested in a second set of experimental studies conducted using doctoral student volunteers from the Health, Biological, and Social sciences who will be participating in a required training course on Responsible Conduct of Research. Based on the findings obtained in these studies concerning the strategies contributing to ethical decision-making, three practical applications will be developed and field tested in a sample of doctoral students. These include: 1) a self-guided tutorial for understanding processes and strategies that are more and less effective for ethical decision-making, 2) an "on-line" decision support system, and 3) strategy application exercises for Responsible Conduct of Research courses. The obtained results should not only serve to validate key processes contributing to ethical decision-making, but the associated strategies identified in this research should provide a basis for a new wave of interventions. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]

Creative problem-solving depends on how people understand the problem and how people understand the problem depends on the mental models they use. Mental models are complex cognitive structures and a variety of techniques have been suggested to develop these models in individuals. The present work will assess the effects of instruction on mental models for causal analysis, applications analysis, constraint analysis, and error analysis in creative problem solving. Results will be used to devise a new educational program for the enhancement of creative thinking in the information technology field.

This research program should provide evidence of the educational approaches that are most likely to be effective in enhancing the efficacy of mental models in creative problem-solving. The real-world application of these approaches will be tested by students working in the information technology field.

This work is funded by SBE within the CreativeIT Program.

This action funds an Ethics Education in Science and Engineering grant entitled "Case based reasoning and ethics instruction: content and processing exercises for effective education" under the direction of Michael D. Mumford at the University of Oklahoma. Cases are commonly used as a basis for ethics instruction in the sciences and engineering. Although case-based instruction is widely applied, little work has examined the key attributes that contribute to effective case-based instruction. This project addresses two key issues: 1) what case content should be stressed in instruction and 2) what instructional activities contribute to effective acquisition of case-based knowledge.

This project examines how case material should be presented to facilitate learning, and transfer of learning, in ethics instruction and is being conducted within a university-wide ethics instructional program for all graduate students attending the University of Oklahoma. In the first phase, variations in presentation of case content are assessed with respect to instruction stressing 1) causes, 2) goals, 3) restrictions, 4) contingencies, and 5) social outcomes. In the second phase, procedures, or processes, for working with case content are examined. More specifically, instruction examines the effects of exercises calling for 1) case comparison, 2) case elaboration, 3) case structuring, 4) case-based forecasting, and 5) situational bounding. The effects of variations in case content and case processing exercises are assessed with respect to gains in the performance of students, vis-à-vis the extant ethics program.

This project demonstrates how case-based instruction can be used to improve ethical decision-making in the sciences and engineering while providing illustrative instructional materials to facilitate widespread application of the findings.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Abstract Ethical conduct is commonly held to depend on ethical decision-making (Greenberg & Baron, 2010). Ethical decision-making, however, is a complex process. Such decisions are influenced by knowledge (National Institute of Medicine, 2002), the strategies people apply in working with this knowledge set, and the context in which the decision is made (Detert, Trevino, & Sweitzer, 2008). Further, both psychological factors and contextual variables may give rise to errors or biases in any decision (Hogarth, 1980; Mumford, Blair, Dailey, Leritz, & Osburn, 2006). The specific goals of the proposed research are to: 1) identify the contextual and psychological variables that might bias ethical decision-making, 2) identify the strategies that might be used to prevent or compensate for most biases, 3) empirically test the relationships of biases and compensatory variables to ethical decision-making, and 4) assess the gains in ethical decision-making resulting from training in bias management. To address these goals a four-phase effort is envisioned. In the first phase, we will conduct a series of qualitative studies, studies based on interviews and think-aloud protocols, to identify the variables that bias ethical decision-making and the strategies that might be used to compensate for these biases. In the second phase, we will develop objective measures of these biases and compensatory strategies. In the third phase, we will assess the incremental value of these biases and compensatory strategies in accounting for ethical decision-making among doctoral students in the health, biological, and social sciences. In the fourth and final phase, findings emerging in phase three will guide modifications to a university-wide ethics education program. The incremental value of including bias management content in ethics education will be tested in a field experiment. The effort outlined above is noteworthy because it will allow identification of critical biases shaping ethical decision-making, and enable the generation of a validated model curriculum for bias management.