Effectiveness of RCR Instruction

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DESCRIPTION (provided by the applicant): Despite an eleven-year history of mandated instruction in responsible conduct of research (RCR), little is known about the effectiveness of such training. The evaluation of RCR instruction has largely been limited to individual courses. Typically, instructors set course goals and objectives and use teaching tools to evaluate mastery of skills. There has been no systematic effort to determine if RCR instruction has measurable effects on awareness, attention, and behavioral judgments related to research ethics. To shed light on RCR instruction effectiveness, we shall conduct a national longitudinal study of biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research postdoctoral trainees supported by NIH F32 Fellowships. We shall use a 3-wave survey to measure awareness, attention to, and behavioral judgment pre- and post-RCR instruction in one core area of RCR content, authorship and publication practices. Our a 3-wave panel design will allow the measurement of the key dependent variables (awareness, attention, and behavioral decisions) prior to RCR instruction, shortly after RCR instruction, and then after a longer time has elapsed post-RCR instruction. We shall disseminate our findings and interpretations in the peer-reviewed literature and on the Internet. We believe that the results of our broad-based, systematic approach will provide a foundation for understanding RCR teaching effectiveness and for suggesting strategies to improve it. Although our study focuses solely on authorship and publication practices, we expect our approach will set the stage for parallel studies in other core topic areas.