TY - JOUR
T1 - Fairness and COVID
T2 - Conducting research during the crisis
AU - Bruton, Samuel
AU - Cargill, Stephanie
AU - McIntosh, Tristan
AU - Antes, Alison
N1 - Funding Information:
We received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to conduct a survey and in-depth follow-up interviews with PIs and RPs to study their perceptions of barriers and facilitators to ethical and responsible PI decision-making near the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically during the fall of 2020, when significant degrees of uncertainty were still being felt. The national survey included three open-ended response narrative questions. In spring and summer of 2021 we conducted in-depth interviews with a subset of survey participants, asking them to describe their experiences in greater depth. This two-sided approach allowed us to gain a comprehensive understanding of potential shifts in views and experiences that occurred between fall of 2020 and summer of 2021. Manuscripts reporting the bulk of the quantitative survey findings and a separate thematic analysis of open-ended survey responses focused on reactions to decisions of institutional administrators have been accepted for publication or are forthcoming independently; in this paper, we focus exclusively on the various narrative comments and interview excerpts that addressed aspects of fairness and the results of the RP quantitative survey questions relevant to fairness ().
Funding Information:
The authors gratefully acknowledge funding support received from National Science Foundation Award Number; 2031851 (Principal Investigators: T. McIntosh and A. Antes) and coding assistance from Andrea Blake and Jaime O’Brien.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic forced Principal Investigators (PIs) to make rapid and unprecedented decisions about ongoing research projects and research teams. Confronted with vague or shifting guidance from institutional administrators and public health officials, PIs nonetheless had to decide whether their projects were “essential,” who could conduct on-site “essential” research, how to continue research activities by remote means if possible, and how to safely and effectively manage personnel during the crisis. Based on both narrative comments from a federally sponsored survey of over a thousand NIH- and NSF-funded PIs and their personnel, as well as follow-up interviews with over 60 survey participants, this study examines various ways PI and institutional decisions raised issues of procedural and distributive fairness. These fairness issues include the challenge of treating research personnel fairly in light of their disparate personal circumstances and inconsistent enforcement of COVID-19-related directives. Our findings highlight aspects of fairness and equitability that all PIs and research administrators should keep in mind for when future research disruptions occur.
AB - The COVID-19 pandemic forced Principal Investigators (PIs) to make rapid and unprecedented decisions about ongoing research projects and research teams. Confronted with vague or shifting guidance from institutional administrators and public health officials, PIs nonetheless had to decide whether their projects were “essential,” who could conduct on-site “essential” research, how to continue research activities by remote means if possible, and how to safely and effectively manage personnel during the crisis. Based on both narrative comments from a federally sponsored survey of over a thousand NIH- and NSF-funded PIs and their personnel, as well as follow-up interviews with over 60 survey participants, this study examines various ways PI and institutional decisions raised issues of procedural and distributive fairness. These fairness issues include the challenge of treating research personnel fairly in light of their disparate personal circumstances and inconsistent enforcement of COVID-19-related directives. Our findings highlight aspects of fairness and equitability that all PIs and research administrators should keep in mind for when future research disruptions occur.
KW - Fairness
KW - justice in research
KW - qualitative research
KW - research ethics
KW - research labs
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85153102276&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/08989621.2023.2201442
DO - 10.1080/08989621.2023.2201442
M3 - Article
C2 - 37037801
AN - SCOPUS:85153102276
SN - 0898-9621
JO - Accountability in Research
JF - Accountability in Research
ER -