Researchers are invited to participate in a research integrity survey

The Centre for Ethics and the Centre for Applied Social Sciences of the University of Tartu, in cooperation with Estonian Research Council, invite scientists to participate in a survey that maps the research ethics-related attitudes, experiences and practices of researchers working in Estonia.

Every response is valuable and contributes to learning more about the circumstances supporting or hindering good research practices. The results will help to support research integrity practices in Estonian research institutions and contribute to research methodology on research ethics and integrity. This study is the first time the researchers’ perspective has been studied in Estonia. The target group is researchers whose workload includes at least 20% of research work, working at any type of research organisation (private, public, higher education institution, university of applied sciences) in Estonia.

The questionnaire will take approximately 20–30 minutes to complete. Participating in the study is voluntary, and respondents may stop participating at any moment without providing reasons for their decision. As IP addresses are not recorded, we suggest finishing the questionnaire in one go.

The survey will not ask for any personal data or request the respondent’s gender, job title, narrow specialisation or name of research institution in order to avoid indirect identification. In addition, we will not collect IP addresses and the answers to open questions will be anonymised before data analysis in case they include identifiable information. The data is used and published only in a generalised form to present the survey results. The collected data will be stored in a secure server at the University of Tartu, with only the members of the project having access. The responsible data processor is the University of Tartu; the Estonian Research Council will have access to aggregated data after the end of the survey.

As a result of the survey, a report will be published on the website of the Estonian Research Council, mapping the researchers’ attitudes and potential problems and recommending solutions for research integrity issues.

Fill out the questionnaire by 4 April.

The completed questionnaires are valuable and help us better understand which practices and experiences support or hinder research integrity in Estonia.

The research is financed by the Estonian Research Council via the European Regional Development Fund RITA programme.