Integrity
The principle of integrity refers to the degree of trustworthiness or believability of research findings. So, a transparent study is trustworthy and believable, right? Not necessarily! Transparency can be considered to be necessary, but not sufficient, for assessing integrity. Being transparent about how a study was done enables other researchers to better assess whether the study has integrity.
If you let your friend taste a cake you’ve made, but don’t tell them any of the ingredients that went into it, they might have a harder job working out why they do or don’t like it than if they know what went into it. For example, if they liked that the cake tasted citrussy, they would not know that was because of the grapefruit zest in the ingredients list (rather than maybe lemon juice or citric acid).
Now let’s assume you have been completely transparent about your ingredients. Can you think of any circumstances where there could still be doubts about your integrity? Make a note in the box below.
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Discussion
Even if you’ve been completely transparent about your baking process (including the ingredients), you may not have been honest about the results of your baking. You could have made unsubstantiated claims about your cake’s health benefits, or implied that it doesn’t contain allergens that are usually found in cakes. If so, you have shown transparency, but the integrity of your work could still be open to challenge.
There are lots of different ideas about what gives research findings integrity, and this will vary greatly depending on the field and research methodology. One important distinction is between qualitative and quantitative methodologies. In the next section, you’ll find out how this can fundamentally affect how researchers think about integrity.
Transparency