If you want more information about the NSRI, here you can find Frequently Asked Questions:
The NSRI is the first ever nation-wide online survey targeting researchers of all universities and university medical centres in The Netherlands. NSRI aims to report on factors that promote or hinder Responsible Research Practices (RRPs). These factors cover for instance perceptions of organizational justice, scientific norms, work pressure, mentoring and social support. It is possible that these factors play different roles in different disciplinary fields: biomedical, natural and engineering sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. Similarly the importance of the factors may vary over the career stages of a researcher. The NSRI is designed to be large enough to look separately at subgroups.
The survey also reported on the frequency of Responsible Research Practices (RRPs) and Questionable Research Practices (QRPs) in each of the four disciplinary fields. Because of its unique methodology and its nationwide target across all disciplinary fields, NSRI can provide solid data to identify driving factors that promote or hinder Responsible Research Practices (RRP).
Five universities (University of Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Radboud University Nijmegen, Tilburg University and Maastricht University) and three university medical centers (Amsterdam UMC, Radboud UMC and Maastricht UMC) actively supported the NSRI by providing the e-mail addresses of their researchers, recommending them to respond, and co-creating effective institutional support to foster research integrity based on the NSRI results. The five participating universities also contribute financially to the NSRI.
The principle investigator of the NSRI is Prof Lex Bouter, heading a core team of researchers comprising Prof. Jelte Wicherts, Associate Prof Gerben ter Riet, Dr. Maarten Cruyff and Dr. Gowri Gopalakrishna. Supporting this core team is a seven member steering committee consisting of national and international experts covering a broad range of expertise in research integrity, survey methodology, social science research and statistics.
The survey comprises of questions which ask about self-reported behaviour and on perceived behaviour of others as well as a few basic background questions on one’s major field of research and academic rank. A set of questions on
explanatory factors that may promote or hinder responsible conduct of research focusing on perceptions concerning organizational justice, individual and group norms, work pressure, mentoring and social support, and likelihood of detection were also asked.
Our privacy protection measures included:
- No personal identifying data was collected except disciplinary field and academic rank.
- All data was collected by a trusted third party, Kantar Public so the research team never received directly any personal data. The research team only received anonymized data by disciplinary field and academic rank.
- E-mail addresses were only used for sending the invitation and reminders and deleted after the response or refusal to participate was received. IP addresses were never stored by Kantar Public.
Because of these measures, no data can be analysed or published that can be traced to individual participants or specific research institutions.