Perceptions of nursing faculty regarding ethical issues in nursing research

A major premise of any research activity is that ethical conduct will be identified and observed during the research process. Yet a comprehensive review of the nursing literature failed to find any research assessing nurses' perceptions of ethical issues related to authorship, publication, reporting results, or funding. This study assessed nursing faculty members' perceptions of ethical scenarios related to the areas of authorship, publication, reporting results, and funding. A 34-item questionnaire, consisting of ethical issues related to research, was mailed to a national random sample of nursing faculty who were teaching at graduate degree-granting institutions. A three-wave mailing was used to maximize response rate. A total of 388 nurses responded to the survey (77.6% response rate). Less than half of the respondents reported that content included in their curriculum was related to the issues under study. Respondents' perceptions of the ethical scenarios varied. A majority of the respondents considered six of the scenarios ethical, eight unethical, one questionable, and one not an ethical issue. Five of the scenarios received widely varied responses. Faculty members who had chaired student dissertations found three questionnaire items significantly (p < .05) more unethical than faculty members who had not chaired dissertations. Faculty teaching in programs in which the highest degree offered was a doctorate found two items unethical significantly more often than faculty teaching at programs in which the highest degree offered was a master's degree. Results of this study demonstrate the potential that students are not being taught necessary issues related to ethical authorship and publication practices. Faculty members themselves may not have had the education needed to educate their own students in the area of research ethics.