ArticleBMC medical ethics2014
Research across the disciplines: a road map for quality criteria in empirical ethics research.
Article in BMC medical ethics, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A worldwide itinerary of research ethics in science for a better social responsibility and justice: a bibliometric analysis and review.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2025Pooled it
- Digital bioethics: exploring an emerging field.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2026Article
- Ethical and bioethical issues in physical therapy: A systematic scoping review.Physical therapy · 2026Article
- Translational bioethics in nursing: a conceptual review of definitions, applications and ethical implications.BMC medical ethics · 2025Review
- The Vagueness of Integrating the Empirical and the Normative: Researchers' Views on Doing Empirical Bioethics.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2024Article
- Why Do I Choose an Animal Model or an Alternative Method in Basic and Preclinical Biomedical Research? A Spectrum of Ethically Relevant Reasons and Their Evaluation.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- The risk of normative bias in reporting empirical research: lessons learned from prenatal screening studies about the prominence of acknowledged limitations.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2023Article
- Values, decision-making and empirical bioethics: a conceptual model for empirically identifying and analyzing value judgements.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2023Article
- AI-assisted ethics? considerations of AI simulation for the ethical assessment and design of assistive technologies.Frontiers in genetics · 2023Article
- Acceptable objectives of empirical research in bioethics: a qualitative exploration of researchers' views.BMC medical ethics · 2022Article
- Defining ethical challenge(s) in healthcare research: a rapid review.BMC medical ethics · 2021Review
- Developing new ways to listen: the value of narrative approaches in empirical (bio)ethics.BMC medical ethics · 2021Article
- South African traditional values and beliefs regarding informed consent and limitations of the principle of respect for autonomy in African communities: a cross-cultural qualitative study.BMC medical ethics · 2021Article
- Design Bioethics: A Theoretical Framework and Argument for Innovation in Bioethics Research.The American journal of bioethics : AJOB · 2021Article
- Early Genital Surgery in Disorders/Differences of Sex Development: Patients' Perspectives.Archives of sexual behavior · 2021Article
- Mapping, framing, shaping: a framework for empirical bioethics research projects.BMC medical ethics · 2019Article
- Illness and disease: an empirical-ethical viewpoint.BMC medical ethics · 2019Article
- The value of bioethical research: A qualitative literature analysis of researchers' statements.PloS one · 2019Article
- Standards of practice in empirical bioethics research: towards a consensus.BMC medical ethics · 2018Article
- Beyond integrating social sciences: Reflecting on the place of life sciences in empirical bioethics methodologies.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundResearch in the field of Empirical Ethics (EE) uses a broad variety of empirical methodologies, such as surveys, interviews and observation, developed in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Whereas these empirical disciplines see themselves as purely descriptive, EE also aims at normative reflection. Currently there is literature about the quality of empirical research in ethics, but little or no reflection on specific methodological aspects that must be considered when conducting interdisciplinary empirical ethics. Furthermore, poor methodology in an EE study results in misleading ethical analyses, evaluations or recommendations. This not only deprives the study of scientific and social value, but also risks ethical misjudgement. DISCUSSION: While empirical and normative-ethical research projects have quality criteria in their own right, we focus on the specific quality criteria for EE research. We develop a tentative list of quality criteria--a "road map"--tailored to interdisciplinary research in EE, to guide assessments of research quality. These quality criteria fall into the categories of primary research question, theoretical framework and methods, relevance, interdisciplinary research practice and research ethics and scientific ethos. SUMMARY: EE research is an important and innovative development in bioethics. However, a lack of standards has led to concerns about and even rejection of EE by various scholars. Our suggested orientation list of criteria, presented in the form of reflective questions, cannot be considered definitive, but serves as a tool to provoke systematic reflection during the planning and composition of an EE research study. These criteria need to be tested in different EE research settings and further refined.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.