The results of the POIESIS Survey Experiment are here!!

A large survey was conducted over the Autumn involving 2847 respondents, a minimum of 400 in each of the projects’ Consortium countries (Denmark, Germany, United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, France and Greece).

The aim of the study was to experimentally investigate the effects of institutional commitment to research integrity and societal integration on public trust in science. To do so, we fielded a conjoint survey experiment in which levels of commitment to integrity and integration were randomly assigned to fictional university profiles. These were then evaluated by the survey respondents, who were asked how trustworthy they found the fictional universities.  

The key conclusions of the study are that:

• Consistent with the assumptions outlined in the POIESIS model, institutional commitment towards both research integrity and societal integration produces higher trustworthiness ratings.
• However, participants are not particularly sensitive to the level of commitment but rather whether commitment is present at all. That is, participants rate institutional commitment to national recommendations as highly as commitment to strict procedures, but both of these higher than lack of commitment.
• While all included forms of research integrity and societal integration positively affect trustworthiness ratings in all included countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Spain, and UK), patterns of magnitude vary. This indicates that while integrity and integration matter cross-contextually the specificities of their influence are sensitive to local and cultural factors.
• The effect of institutional commitment to research integrity and societal integration is generally not diminished by cues on the reputation of organizations, neither regarding their prestige nor achievements in specific fields of research. This implies that effects of commitment towards integrity and integration is not merely used as a proxy for institutional reputation but plays an independent role in shaping trust.
• The effects of institutional commitment to research integrity and societal integration are only sensitive to sociodemographic and attitudinal differences to a minor degree. However, one notable exception is prior trust in science which is highly related to the effectiveness of institutional commitment to research integrity and societal integration. Specifically, the effect of institutional commitment is confined to participants who indicate to trust science prior to the experiment (above 5 on a 0-10 scale), whereas respondents who have low levels of prior trust in science (5 or below) exhibit no differences in trustworthiness ratings across levels of institutional commitment.

To read the full results of the Survey Experiment download the Deliverable D2.4 here