Summary

This week you explored more aspects of the principle of integrity: conflicts of interest, positionality, and the link between results and conclusions, and robustness.

Positionality is an individual's social and political position, shaped by factors like identity, background, experiences, values, and beliefs. It can influence the link between results and conclusions: when researchers interpret their data, there is a chance it could colour their interpretation. Potential researcher biases can also impact how researchers write up conclusions following on from their results. It’s important to try to avoid, or at least be explicit about potential biases in your own writing. Finally, robustness is whether or not results hold up in multiple analyses – where they do, we can have more confidence in the results. This helps researchers defend themselves against potential bias.

In Week 6 you’ll be moving on from the principle of integrity to the principle of accessibility.