Making Professional Decisions in Research: Measurement and Key Predictors

The professional decision-making in research (PDR) measure was administered to 400 National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded and industry-funded investigators, along with measures of cynicism, moral disengagement, compliance disengagement, impulsivity, work stressors, knowledge of responsible conduct of research (RCR), and socially desirable response tendencies. Negative associations were found for the PDR and measures of cynicism, moral disengagement, and compliance disengagement, while positive associations were found for the PDR and RCR knowledge and positive urgency, an impulsivity subscale. PDR scores were not related to socially desirable responding, or to measures of work stressors and the remaining impulsivity subscales. In a multivariate logistic regression analysis, lower moral disengagement scores, higher RCR knowledge, and identifying the United States as one’s nation of origin emerged as key predictors of stronger performance on the PDR. The implications of these findings for understanding the measurement of decision-making in research and future directions for research and RCR education are discussed.     

Anticipated Ethics and Regulatory Challenges in PCORnet: The National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network

PCORnet, the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network, seeks to establish a robust national health data network for patient-centered comparative effectiveness research. This article reports the results of a PCORnet survey designed to identify the ethics and regulatory challenges anticipated in network implementation. A 12-item online survey was developed by leadership of the PCORnet Ethics and Regulatory Task Force; responses were collected from the 29 PCORnet networks. The most pressing ethics issues identified related to informed consent, patient engagement, privacy and confidentiality, and data sharing. High priority regulatory issues included IRB coordination, privacy and confidentiality, informed consent, and data sharing. Over 150 IRBs and five different approaches to managing multisite IRB review were identified within PCORnet. Further empirical and scholarly work, as well as practical and policy guidance, is essential if important initiatives that rely on comparative effectiveness research are to move forward.     

Using the community of inquiry for interviewing children: theory and practice

Involvement of children in research processes requires various ethical considerations. In particular, while interviewing children, a researcher needs to take into consideration the power imbalance between a researcher and children as well as among children. This article suggests a possible way of mitigating potential risks, drawing on the idea and practice of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) as an interview method. CoI is the practice of group dialog for knowledge-making, where participants talk about a common topic by sharing their lived experiences in a cooperative manner. This article shows that CoI allows children to act as both interviewers and interviewees, which helps children in reflective knowledge-making while at the same time mitigating the ethical concerns of interviewing. To illustrate how CoI can help achieve these goals, this article draws on the empirical research conducted with a group of junior high school students in Japan.     

基于鱼刺图分析法的研究生导师师德师风建设研究 ——以河北工程大学为例

通过对国务院、教育部、河北省和河北工程大学出台的研究生导师立德树人与师德师风建设的系列规章制度进行研读、分析,梳理出研究生导师立德树人行为与师德师风建设的核心要素主要包括十六个维度;引入鱼刺分析图作为分析工具,将研究生导师立德树人与师德师风建设相应的十六个维度核心因素归纳整理为四大类、二十个小类因素,绘制成研究生导师立德树人与师德师风建设影响因素鱼刺分析图,给出了研究生导师立德树人与师德师风建设的影响因素一览表;结合河北工程大学实际,以研究生导师立德树人行为与师德师风建设影响因素鱼刺分析图为分析脉络,经过实地调查、走访,总结了该校研究生导师师德师风与立德树人建设所取得的成绩,发现了该校研究生导师师德师风与立德树人建设所存在问题;提出了优化研究生导师师德师风的实现路径和对策。     

Recognizing Structural Nonidentifiability: When Experiments Do Not Provide Information About Important Parameters and Misleading Models Can Still Have Great Fit

In the quest to model various phenomena, the foundational importance of parameter identifiability to sound statistical modeling may be less well appreciated than goodness of fit. Identifiability concerns the quality of objective information in data to facilitate estimation of a parameter, while nonidentifiability means there are parameters in a model about which the data provide little or no information. In purely empirical models where parsimonious good fit is the chief concern, nonidentifiability (or parameter redundancy) implies overparameterization of the model. In contrast, nonidentifiability implies underinformativeness of available data in mechanistically derived models where parameters are interpreted as having strong practical meaning. This study explores illustrative examples of structural nonidentifiability and its implications using mechanistically derived models (for repeated presence/absence analyses and dose–response of Escherichia coli O157:H7 and norovirus) drawn from quantitative microbial risk assessment. Following algebraic proof of nonidentifiability in these examples, profile likelihood analysis and Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo with uniform priors are illustrated as tools to help detect model parameters that are not strongly identifiable. It is shown that identifiability should be considered during experimental design and ethics approval to ensure generated data can yield strong objective information about all mechanistic parameters of interest. When Bayesian methods are applied to a nonidentifiable model, the subjective prior effectively fabricates information about any parameters about which the data carry no objective information. Finally, structural nonidentifiability can lead to spurious models that fit data well but can yield severely flawed inferences and predictions when they are interpreted or used inappropriately.     

“动物与人”：叙事伦理、悖反性与双重困境指向——论“抉择之痛”作为功能指涉的效力边际

对初始情境中受难者“陷困”功能的探讨，是“动物叙事”叙事语法研究中不容忽视的一环，其中贯穿了一个最为基础的叙事功能指向——“抉择之痛”。强调“动物与人”两类受难者角色在身体、心理抑或情感维度陷入某种矛盾与纠结的状态，并且彼此间时常呈现出一定的矛盾悖反性。这一角色身份由动物形象与人类形象分别或共同承担，均指向一种叙事伦理层面的现代境遇的表达。在题材范畴方面，这一功能指涉涵盖了家养类与野生类“动物叙事”各自的叙事范畴。其效力边际已不仅仅局限在单纯生态视域与人性指涉的层面，而是凸显现代语境下人类所面临的共通性的伦理困境：一种挥之不去的矛盾、困惑与不安的情感和心境的写照。     

滕尼斯与齐美尔:社会伦理同文化伦理的分流

作为德国社会学的两位奠基人，滕尼斯和齐美尔奠定了截然相反的两种现代伦理生活格局。伦理世界观的分流源于他们各自对时代处境的体验以及对思想史的独特解释。从近代自然法的角度出发，滕尼斯的社会伦理的核心是重建政治社会的秩序与风尚，一切价值最终都要融入社会；与此相反，齐美尔的社会学思考从一开始就以对社会伦理的批评作为前提，他将超越社会的个体生命视作伦理的目的，对他来说，生命不仅意味着身处社会之中的个体具有饱满个性，而且从自身孕育出客观的、适用于他自己的伦理责任。从帝制时期到魏玛时期，德国社会伦理同文化伦理的分流、交织与合流为我们提供了一条理解德国社会学史的清晰主线。     

基于分层教学理论的高职高专公共英语教改探索

针对高职高专院校学生生源的层次差异,英语教学可采用分层教学,即根据学生个体差异,将学生分成不同水平的班组,制订不同的计划、目标和方法进行教学。分层教学能够使更多的学生在各自基础上得到最为有效、合理的发展,使各类学生的潜能都能得到最大程度的开发。分层教学实施过程中,要注意制订科学合理的分层方案,进行科学有效的管理,注重教师教育科研水平的提升。     

Best Practice to Order Authors in Multi/Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Research Publications

Misunderstanding and disputes about authorship are commonplace among members of multi/interdisciplinary health research teams. If left unmanaged and unresolved, these conflicts can undermine knowledge sharing and collaboration, obscure accountability for research, and contribute to the incorrect attribution of credit. To mitigate these issues, certain researchers suggest quantitative authorship distributions schemes (e.g., point systems), while others wish to replace or minimize the importance of authorship by using “contributorship”—a system based on authors’ self-reporting contributions. While both methods have advantages, we argue that authorship and contributorship will most likely continue to coexist for multiple ethical and practical reasons. In this article, we develop a five-step “best practice” that incorporates the distribution of both contributorship and authorship for multi/interdisciplinary research. This procedure involves continuous dialogue and the use of a detailed contributorship taxonomy ending with a declaration explaining contributorship, which is used to justify authorship order. Institutions can introduce this approach in responsible conduct of research training as it promotes greater fairness, trust, and collegiality among team members and ultimately reduces confusion and facilitates resolution of time-consuming disagreements.     

Judging public relations: An analysis of an Israeli court judgement on a defamatory and negative campaign

This article analyzes a recent court ruling in Israel and argues that it has major implications for the public relations community internationally. To date, the public relations literature on legal judgments has focused on cases where media channels were sued for defamation. The article uses a 2012 Israeli court decision that may be unique in ruling out defamatory intentions in a public relations plan that was part of a lawsuit. The defendant in this case was not the media but rather a company that hired a public relations firm to, according to the judgement, conduct a defamatory campaign against a competitor. Although this is just one case in one country, the article also considers some of the wider implications for the profession and for democracy.