Two NIU professors received federal grants to do projects concerning ethics in research.

Jeffrey Hecht, professor and chair of the department of educational technology, research and assessment; and Murali Krishnamurthi, director of NIU’s Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center and an associate professor of industrial engineering, both received $25,000 in federal grants to develop these projects.

The university is giving each professor an additional $13,000 toward the projects, Hecht said.

The grants came from the Office of Research Integrity, a federal agency part of the United States’ Department of Health and Human Services.

Last year, Hecht submitted a proposal for his project “RCR For the Rest of Us.” Hecht said it was sent back to him with comments, and it made it through when he submitted it the second time.

“RCR For the Rest of Us” is a training program for researchers. RCR stands for responsible conduct of research.

Hecht said current training materials are mostly for biomedical research, which deals with topics such as disease and health care.

Hecht said there aren’t many training materials for people who do social or behavioral research, the kind of research done at NIU. This is the reason for the name “RCR For the Rest of Us.”

The project will be a CD-ROM or series of CD-ROMs dealing with 11 aspects of conducting ethical research, Hecht said.

Some of these areas include ways of collecting data, publication of data, research involving humans, research involving animals and conflict of interest issues in research. What Hecht said he hopes to accomplish is a training program for researchers at NIU. It would train them to do research in an ethical manner.

Hecht said it will take about a year to complete this project.

He hopes the project will turn into a training program for researchers at NIU. Hecht said it would be good if undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty who do research would go through this training before they begin research.

Krishnamurthi’s project is very similar to Hecht’s. His proposed project also concerns ethics in research. However, Krishnamurthi’s project is a Web site.

Krishnamurthi described his project as an interactive site with scenarios that educate researchers on how to make ethical decisions.

“You can’t just go and conduct a survey,” Krishnamurthi said. He said people have to know the ethics involved with research before starting.

Krishnamurthi said people who go to the Web site will be presented with different scenarios that might come up when researching, and then they will be given choices and the consequences of those choices. The name of his project is “Online Decision Instructions for Data Integrity.”

Krishnamurthi said the site will deal with ethical dilemmas, such as how people report research ethically, how to do it accurately and other issues. He wants to finish the project by next August.

Krishnamurthi said the main goal of this project is to create an online learning tool for researchers. He said developing a product like this will give recognition to NIU.