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Research Paper vs. Research Article: What’s the Difference?

Research papers and research articles are two different forms of academic writing, with distinct characteristics. Although they share some similarities in terms of format and purpose, there are important distinctions between the two types that should be understood by students who wish to write either form effectively. This article will explain the differences between a research paper and a research article, outlining their unique features and applications. Furthermore, it will offer guidance on how best to approach each type when crafting an effective piece for scholarly consumption.

I. Introduction to Research Paper vs. Research Article

Ii. defining a research paper and a research article, iii. comparative analysis of structure, content, and writing styles between the two types of scholarly documents, iv. pros & cons of conducting either a formal or an informal study, v. concluding remarks: how to choose between the different approaches when completing academic assignments, vi. limitations in comparing these texts as distinct forms of scholarly outputs, vii. future directions for understanding similarities & differences across all kinds of academic writings.

Research Paper vs. Research Article

The academic world is full of a variety of different writing styles, each with its own unique purpose and goals. Two particularly important forms are the research paper and the research article. Each has their own distinct features that make them uniquely suited to certain tasks within academia – let’s take a closer look at what sets them apart from one another!

A research paper , as you might expect, presents in-depth analysis on an issue or topic using evidence gathered through primary sources such as field work, laboratory experiments, surveys, interviews etc., whereas a research article , typically published in scholarly journals or online publications like websites & blogs addresses specific findings derived from secondary sources like books or other papers related to said subject matter. The former requires more effort & dedication from the author due to it being time consuming & involving careful structuring along with rigorous citation format adherence; while the latter focuses mainly on providing succinct yet comprehensive overviews regarding topics which have already been extensively discussed by experts in depth previously elsewhere – taking into account present day developments/breakthroughs if necessary before finally offering opinionated conclusions pertaining to said subjects.

Exploring the Characteristics of a Research Paper and Article

Research paper:
Research article:

A research paper is an extended form of writing that presents and supports an argument on a particular topic. It provides evidence for the opinion or idea in the form of facts, data, analysis, opinions from authorities in specific fields etc. The objective is to make original claims based on careful evaluation of information available on a given subject. It requires significant effort as one needs to be able to distill complex topics into concisely articulated points that are supported by solid evidence.

On the other hand, a research article is usually written for publication either online or printed through journals or magazines. These articles have been peer-reviewed which means they follow certain academic standards established within their discipline while presenting factual conclusions related to ongoing debates and arguments raised by preceding works. They generally provide new insight into existing knowledge rather than build upon it using more primary sources such as surveys and experiments conducted independently by authors themselves.

Comparison of Structure, Content and Writing Styles between Research Papers and Articles For the purpose of scholarly communication, both research papers and articles play a vital role. Though there is no hard-and-fast rule that distinguishes them from each other in terms of structure or content, they usually differ significantly in their style. In comparison to research papers, articles typically have a much smaller length requirement. They can range anywhere from 1 page to as many as 30 pages depending on the journal guidelines – making them more accessible for readers who are seeking concise summaries with quick insights into topics. On the contrary, research papers tend to be longer documents that delve deeper into an issue by providing extensive background information; detailed analysis; arguments bolstered by sources such as peer-reviewed journals or interviews; conclusion sections tying up any loose ends etc.

Research Papers: Longer documents which provide extensive coverage about an issue.
Articles: Short pieces covering high level overviews without going too deep.

When it comes down to writing styles used for these two types of documents – Authors generally follow formal academic language while creating research paper whereas article writers tend to use more casual tones in order to appeal wider audience groups. Additionally authors will often adopt conversational elements like anecdotes when crafting articles so that readers can get better understanding about specific points being discussed within context.

Formal vs. Informal Study: A Critical Analysis The choice between conducting a formal or informal study may be difficult for researchers due to the advantages and drawbacks of each approach. Depending on their research topic, scientists must carefully weigh up the pros and cons before deciding which course of action is most suitable for them.

A formal study , as conducted in many research papers and articles, often requires more time-consuming effort from researchers than an informal one because it involves using specific methodologies such as surveys, interviews, experiments etc., gathering quantitative data that needs to be statistically analyzed by employing reliable statistical methods. On the other hand, a formal investigation allows researchers to obtain objective information from well-defined populations about predetermined variables through systematic procedures that can yield precise results with larger external validity – making it possible to make generalizations beyond those studied in this particular case.

Conversely, an informal study , also known as participant observation or field work requires less structured approaches where collecting qualitative data is usually achieved via conversations with informants instead of strict instrumentations; thus allowing greater interaction between researcher and subjects resulting in increased understanding of contextually situated phenomena within its natural setting rather than artificially created ones used in laboratories’ studies – leading to deeper insights into complex social processes . Also noteworthy is its lower financial cost when compared against highly expensive equipment needed for undertaking large scale scientific investigations.. However despite yielding valuable first person accounts which might not have been obtained elsewhere , such observations are sometimes criticized due challenges related accuracy given reliance on subjective interpretations while generating evidence without significant use of control variables .

Selecting the Optimal Approach for Academic Assignments When it comes to completing academic assignments, there are various approaches one can take. In order to ensure success and optimal results, it is important that students consider all of their options carefully before making a choice.

Research papers often require extensive research and careful consideration when selecting an approach. Using primary sources such as books or peer-reviewed articles may be more reliable in comparison to secondary sources such as websites or blogs which are usually less credible due to lack of credibility checks by professionals within the field. Additionally, data analysis can help strengthen arguments while also adding clarity to any work produced during the course of completion; however, understanding how best utilize this analytical tool effectively requires additional practice and experience on behalf of the student undertaking it. For research articles, detailed knowledge about particular topics may lead towards better outcomes but general familiarity with content areas is sufficient enough for success here too. The key lies in being able identify appropriate methods quickly through use critical thinking skills coupled with clear objectives pertaining specifically each assignment itself at hand prior its execution – this way mistakes are avoided thus delivering quality results each time..

Comparative Analyses of Scholarly Outputs

Scholarly output, such as research papers and articles, are subject to scrutiny when attempting to make comparisons.
Due to the differences between these two types of outputs, it can be difficult or impossible to achieve a true comparison.

Comparing scholarly outputs is not always possible due to their distinct forms. Research papers typically have more depth than an article on the same topic which may mean that even though both documents might discuss similar topics in some aspects they will differ greatly in others. Furthermore, the format of each type of document contributes further complexities; for example, a research paper is often much longer and requires extensive background information before any conclusions can be drawn while articles tend towards presenting results with little room left for interpretation. The style used by authors also adds difficulty; many times research papers include complex jargon necessary for understanding specific points whereas an article strives for simplicity so its target audience can comprehend all material without excessive effort. These limitations prevent proper analysis from being done since one piece could provide certain details while another provides only bits related thereto leading readers into confusion if attempting to compare them directly despite intentions otherwise. It then becomes clear that academic pieces should instead remain separate entities rather than compared against each other since doing so would lead only too frustration given current constraints therein found.

Exploring the Similarities and Differences Between Academic Writings

As our understanding of academic writings continues to evolve, so too must our appreciation for both their similarities and differences. From research papers to research articles, it is important to consider how each one contributes unique insight into a given topic or issue.

The research paper and research article may look similar on the surface, but upon closer inspection one can see significant differences in their format, purpose, and audience. The key distinctions between these two forms of written work are scope of content covered, type of analysis used to draw conclusions or develop knowledge from data or evidence presented, and intended readership. Ultimately, understanding the essential characteristics that distinguish a research paper from a research article is beneficial for anyone who produces such texts as it will help them craft an effective product that aligns with its desired purposes.

Difference between Research Paper and Research Article

Research paper and research articles are bits of composing that require inquiry, critical analysis, demonstration and insight of few special abilities from understudies and researchers. This article endeavors to see whether the two terms are synonymous or there is any contrast between the two.

Research paper

Research can be said as activity which is specified much significance in scholastics. Be that as it may, research papers are not only these task papers composed by understudies as those composed by scholars and researchers and also published in different journals are additionally alluded to as research papers.

Research Article

Research article is a bit of composing that have original research thought with the pertinent data and discoveries. A research article is a composing or paper that advises individuals of a way breaking a finding or research with data to bolster the finding.

Research Paper VS Research Article

There is a pattern to allude to academic papers and term papers composed by understudies in schools as a research paper

The articles presented by researchers and scholars with their noteworthy examination are known as research articles.

Research papers composed by the students mostly not take in journals.

Research articles composed by researchers or scholars mostly published in prestigious scientific journals.

A research paper depends on the original research. The sort of research may fluctuate, contingent upon your field or topics that include survey, experiments, questionnaire, interview and so on; yet authors require gathering and investigating raw data and make an original and real study. The research paper will be founded on the investigation and understanding of this raw data.

A research article depends on other different published articles. It is usually not depend on original study. Research articles for the most part condense the current writing on a point trying to clarify the present condition of comprehension on topic.

A research paper can be said as the primary source that means, it studies the techniques and consequences of original study performed by the writers.

A research article can be said as secondary source that means it is composed about different articles, and does not studies actual research of its own.

Importance:

In research paper, every part of this has its own importance. A concise is important in light of the fact that it shows that the writers know about existing literature, and want to add to this presented research definitively. A methods part is usually detailed and it is important in a way that different analysts have the capacity to check and/or duplicate these strategies. A result segment depicts the results of the analysis.

Research articles can be considered very important because they describe upon different articles that they analyze to propose new research bearings, to give powerful support for presented theories or distinguish designs among presented research studies. For understudy analysts, these research articles give an excellent review of presented literature on that topic. In the event that you discover a literature review that can be fit in study, investigate its references/works referred to list for guide on other articles.

From the above article we can conclude that research paper is the primary source whereas research articles are secondary.

17 Comments Already

good article but which of them is more useful when we conduct a research

both. but research paper is more useful.

Nice explanation

There is a little difference but both are different.

Nice but i have a confusion that can a guys of Bachelors level can write Research Papers?

YEs they can if they do research project instead of development project and do something new in their project.

Thank you 😊

do you have something in your mind then please share with us. We will appreciate that.

Though it may be fairly easy to learn to speak English well enough to be understood, learning to write English correctly is very difficult, as this article so clearly illustrates. Though I greatly admire all those who are making an effort to learn another language, like English, as a non-native speaker, it is wrong for these same individuals to assume they can write English well enough to publish articles.

This article is so poorly written that I cannot understand most of it. For instance, the following phrases are utter nonsense: “A research paper can be said as the primary source that means,” — “A concise is important in light of the fact that it shows that . . .” — “A methods part is usually detailed” — “A result segment depicts the results . . .” — “they describe upon different articles that they analyze to propose new research bearings . . . or distinguish designs among presented . .. studies” — “to clarify the present condition of comprehension” — “Research papers and . . . articles require inquiry, critical analysis, demonstration and insight of few special abilities from . . .”

This article also states that “[a] research article . . . is usually not depend (sic) on original study,” then contradicts that in the next sentence with “[r]esearch articles . . . condense the current writing on a point . . .” Most studies these days are current. But, even if a study was conducted 50 years ago, it’s a cardinal rule that one should always use the original source of information rather than relying on the articles of other authors who may have misquoted something from the original study.

Articles like this one do a grave disservice to the viewing and researching public. To present this article as informative is disingenuous. To ask people who are seeking useful information to struggle with reading and trying to make sense of this poor English is so unkind and inconsiderate that I feel compelled to bring it to the author’s and publisher’s attention.

I would be honored to help anyone with their efforts to write English, but, please, be honest with yourselves about your lack of knowledge, so you will cease and desist the writing of anything online until your English skills have improved significantly. Thank you.

Thanks for such a detail input. Best wishes.

Yes you are saying right. So if you have the skills to deliver the answer in an efficient manner so kindly type it for me. Because I really want to know the difference between research paper and research article

Yes I agree with Martha. I myself found difficulty in going through the article. Although the topic is very important to be discussed because being the student of graduate, I must know the difference. But the way of delivering has dispirited me that now what other website should I visit to get accurate answer.

we need Published example of a scientific research article and another for a scientific research

how can I cite this?

“Difference between Research Paper and Research Article”, Reserachpedia.info, https://researchpedia.info/difference-between-research-paper-and-research-article/ , [27 December 2021].

I don’t understand anything. I am confused more than i came. Otehrwise, thank you for a trial. Simplify this communication.

Q. What's the difference between a research article (or research study) and a review article?

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Answered By: Priscilla Coulter Last Updated: Jul 29, 2022 Views: 231616

A research paper is a primary source ...that is, it reports the methods and results of an original study performed by the authors . The kind of study may vary (it could have been an experiment, survey, interview, etc.), but in all cases, raw data have been collected and analyzed by the authors , and conclusions drawn from the results of that analysis.

Research papers follow a particular format. Look for:

A brief introduction will often include a review of the existing literature on the topic studied, and explain the rationale of the author's study. This is important because it demonstrates that the authors are aware of existing studies, and are planning to contribute to this existing body of research in a meaningful way (that is, they're not just doing what others have already done).
A methods section, where authors describe how they collected and analyzed data. Statistical analyses are included. This section is quite detailed, as it's important that other researchers be able to verify and/or replicate these methods.
A results section describes the outcomes of the data analysis. Charts and graphs illustrating the results are typically included.
In the discussion , authors will explain their interpretation of their results and theorize on their importance to existing and future research.
References or works cited are always included. These are the articles and books that the authors drew upon to plan their study and to support their discussion.

You can use the library's article databases to search for research articles:

A research article will nearly always be published in a peer-reviewed journal; click here for instructions on limiting your searches to peer-reviewed articles.
If you have a particular type of study in mind, you can include keywords to describe it in your search . For instance, if you would like to see studies that used surveys to collect data, you can add "survey" to your topic in the database's search box. See this example search in our EBSCO databases: " bullying and survey ".
Several of our databases have special limiting options that allow you to select specific methodologies. See, for instance, the " Methodology " box in ProQuest's PsycARTICLES Advanced Search (scroll down a bit to see it). It includes options like "Empirical Study" and "Qualitative Study", among many others.

A review article is a secondary source ...it is written about other articles, and does not report original research of its own. Review articles are very important, as they draw upon the articles that they review to suggest new research directions, to strengthen support for existing theories and/or identify patterns among exising research studies. For student researchers, review articles provide a great overview of the existing literature on a topic. If you find a literature review that fits your topic, take a look at its references/works cited list for leads on other relevant articles and books!

You can use the library's article databases to find literature reviews as well! Click here for tips.

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Journal Article vs Research Paper: Difference and Comparison

A journal article presents original research findings in a concise format, focusing on a specific topic within a broader field. It undergoes peer review before publication, ensuring quality and validity. On the other hand, a research paper is a comprehensive document that may include multiple experiments, analyses, and discussions, aimed at contributing to the advancement of scientific knowledge.

Key Takeaways A journal article is a shorter scholarly writing published in a specific academic journal. A research paper is a more extended, comprehensive academic writing presenting original research. Journal articles are more focused and present specific findings, while research papers are broader and present a more comprehensive study.

Journal Article vs Research Paper

A journal article is a piece of published work that presents the research findings and may include analysis, remark, or discussion. A research paper is a detailed account of the research that may be published or unpublished and includes an introduction, literature review, methods, results, and conclusion.

Comparison Table

What is journal article.

A journal article is a scholarly publication that presents the findings of original research, analysis, or review within a particular academic field. These articles serve as fundamental units of scholarly communication, disseminating new knowledge, theories, and insights to the academic community and beyond. Here’s a detailed breakdown:

Content and Structure

1 Abstract: A journal article begins with an abstract, a concise summary of the study’s objectives, methods, results, and conclusions. The abstract provides readers with a quick overview of the article’s content and findings.

2 Introduction: Following the abstract, the introduction sets the context for the study by reviewing relevant literature, identifying gaps or controversies in existing knowledge, and stating the research objectives or hypotheses.

Peer Review Process:

1 Submission: Authors submit their articles to scholarly journals for publication consideration, adhering to the journal’s guidelines and formatting requirements.

2 Peer Review: Upon submission, the journal’s editor assigns the manuscript to peer reviewers—experts in the field—who evaluate the article’s quality, originality, methodology, and significance. Peer review helps ensure the rigor and credibility of the research.

3 Revision: Based on the reviewers’ feedback, authors may revise their article to address any concerns or criticisms raised. This iterative process of revision and reevaluation continues until the article meets the journal’s standards for publication.

4 Acceptance and Publication: If the article meets the journal’s criteria, it is accepted for publication and undergoes final editing and formatting. Once published, the article becomes part of the journal’s archive and is accessible to readers worldwide.

What is Research Paper?

A research paper is a comprehensive document that presents the findings, analysis, and interpretations of original research conducted by the author(s) within a specific academic discipline. These papers serve as a means for scholars to contribute new knowledge, theories, and insights to their respective fields. Here’s a detailed breakdown:

1. Content and Structure

1 Introduction: The introduction of a research paper provides background information on the topic, reviews relevant literature, and outlines the research objectives or hypotheses. It establishes the context for the study and justifies its significance.

2 Methods: The methods section describes the procedures, materials, and techniques employed in the research. It should provide sufficient detail to enable other researchers to replicate the study and verify its results.

3 Results: This section presents the empirical findings of the research, using tables, figures, or graphs to illustrate data. Authors report their observations or measurements objectively, without interpretation or speculation.

4 Discussion: In the discussion section, authors interpret the results in light of the research questions or hypotheses, comparing them to previous studies and addressing their implications. They may also explore alternative explanations, limitations of the study, and avenues for future research.

5 Conclusion: The conclusion summarizes the main findings of the research and highlights their significance. It may reiterate the study’s contribution to the field, offer final reflections, and suggest directions for further inquiry.

Characteristics and Scope

1 Original Research: Unlike review papers or essays, research papers are based on original research conducted by the authors. They contribute new data, insights, or interpretations to the academic discourse.

2 Rigorous Methodology: Research papers adhere to rigorous scientific or scholarly methodologies, employing systematic approaches to data collection, analysis, and interpretation. They prioritize objectivity, validity, and reliability in their findings.

3 Length and Complexity: Research papers vary in length and complexity, depending on the scope of the study and the requirements of the target publication venue. They may range from concise reports of preliminary findings to comprehensive analyses of multi-year research projects.

4 Contribution to Knowledge: Research papers aim to advance knowledge within their respective fields by addressing research gaps, testing hypotheses, or generating new theories. They contribute to the cumulative growth of scholarship through the dissemination of original research findings.

Main Differences Between Journal Article and Research Paper

Journal articles focus on a specific aspect or finding within a broader topic.
Research papers provide a comprehensive analysis of a research project, including multiple experiments, analyses, and discussions.
Journal articles are concise, containing essential findings, methods, and interpretations in a limited space.
Research papers tend to be longer and more detailed, offering exhaustive exploration of the research topic, methodology, results, and implications.
Journal articles undergo peer review by experts in the field before publication, ensuring quality and validity.
Research papers may or may not undergo formal peer review, depending on the publication venue or academic requirements.
Journal articles present findings objectively, without extensive interpretation or speculation.
Research papers include in-depth interpretation of results, discussion of implications, and exploration of potential limitations or biases.
Journal articles contribute to the scholarly conversation by presenting new findings, analyses, or reviews within a specific topic area.
Research papers advance knowledge within a field by offering comprehensive analyses, testing hypotheses, or generating new theories through original research.

Difference Between Journal Article and Research Paper

https://gssrr.org/index.php/gssrr/How-to-Publish-Research-Paper
https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/journal-author/types-of-journal-manuscripts/1356
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/common_writing_assignments/research_papers/index.html

Last Updated : 05 March, 2024

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21 thoughts on “journal article vs research paper: difference and comparison”.

The characteristics of a journal article outlined in the article shed light on the structured nature of these scholarly publications. It’s important to understand the components that make up a journal article to effectively communicate research findings.

Agreed, knowing the key components of a journal article is essential for researchers aiming to publish their work in reputable academic journals.

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I find the comparison table provided in the article particularly helpful. It offers a quick reference for distinguishing between journal articles and research papers based on publication outlet, content, target audience, peer review, length, structure, emphasis, and impact.

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DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RESEARCH PAPER AND JOURNAL ARTICLE

Difference between research paper and journal article.

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Difference Between Research Article and Research Paper

This article will discuss both writings formats and discuss Difference Between Research Article and Research Paper.

It’s likely that you will hear a lot about research papers and research articles, whether you are a student at a college or university or working towards a profession.

Both types of writing are common techniques used by educators and businesses to get feedback from coworkers and students on a topic or subject. One must understand each form and how people use it in to differentiate between the two types of writing.

The majority of assignments require a specific working framework and exploration because research is seen as a movement that has gained substantial popularity in the academic world. The research papers and research articles serve as a compilation that is required for the essential certification, as well as for comprehending and demonstrating outstanding aptitude for research and study.

The research articles and research papers are the parts of the writing which need investigation, critical analysis, insight, and presentation of few particular skills from the scientists and students. When the teacher assigns the class to write a research paper, it actually overwhelms the students. Research articles and research papers have many similarities, which causes students to become confused. Here, we shall highlight the fundamental differences between the two terms.

Table of Contents

Research Article

What will a researcher or scientist do after they have found the answer to a question or made a discovery they wish to share with the world?

Well, writing a research paper is the ideal way to share your knowledge and expertise with the world. An authentic study topic, together with pertinent findings and data, are all included in a research article. It is published by renowned scientific journals that are concerned with the field of work to which your study relates. You can refer to a research paper as a writing or a paper that informs readers of a new line of enquiry or a discovery that is supported by evidence.

A research article gets a touch of building with original research, pertinent data, and disclosures. It is a particular study article that informs readers who are worried about the finding being broken or who are looking for information to support the finding.

A research article, according to Simon Fraser University, is a piece of writing that is written about a specific topic. A research article written by an expert in a certain field is frequently written by another expert in the same field. Peer reviews are another term for this kind of writing.

A research article is a concise piece of writing on a certain subject that is typically published in issues or periodicals. Current research on the topic, including new advances, analyses of a technique or item, and brief studies previewing concepts are frequently included.

A Research article may contain details on the most recent techniques or methods in a certain industry. Peer reviews, case studies, scholarly articles, scientific, and social science articles are further types of research articles. A journal publishes research articles only after conducting a substantial amount of research in the related field. Research articles are classified as primary literature or review articles in the Publication Manual.

Purpose of Research Article

A research article may be a significant source, making it a valuable resource for creating the thesis for the relevant topic. It includes a report on the methods and results of the researchers’ original research.

The type of study conducted may vary (it may take the form of an experiment, interview, meeting, etc.), but in every instance, the researcher gathers the raw data, breaks it down, and then draws conclusions based on the investigations carried out throughout the study.

As a result, each project is different, and regardless of the language you use, your article must be able to effectively convey all of your research and findings.

Format of Research Article

Create a title that is specific enough to summarize the entire article’s content while being understandable. The article’s title ought to be relevant for the target audience.

Article titles, such as “ Effect of Alcohol on Academic Performance ,” typically describe the article’s topic matter.

The initial author of an article is typically considered to be a researcher who conducted the research and produced the paper.

Other people have made significant contributions in writing the research article that is published, and as a result, they are considered authors. Before listing your mentor’s name as a co-author or author, you can get their permission.

It gives readers a sneak peek at the entire study. By allowing other scientists to quickly scan a sizable portion of the scientific literature, they can then choose which research articles they want to study in-depth. A research article’s abstract should be a little less technical than the article’s content.

An abstract must be one paragraph long (between 100 and 250 words), summarizing the objective, methods, results, and conclusion of the study.

Giving all the information in a single paragraph is not very simple. Start by including the overview of what you feel is vital to mention, and then gradually reduce the length by omitting the unimportant details while keeping the crucial information.

In your abstract, avoid using citations or abbreviations. Without any footnotes, it must be readable.

→INTRODUCTION

What is the objective of your research?
What are the research questions?
Which problem your research has addressed?

In order for your reader to comprehend the aim of the topic and what makes it so intriguing, this section of the essay provides a synopsis of the relevant literature.

A two- to four-paragraph introduction is appropriate. Finish it up with a statement that clarifies the question.

This section describes how you will respond to your question. Here, there must be enough information to let the reader understand the research.

Look for related articles that were published before yours to get a sense of this section of the article.

If you have a complicated method, it can be beneficial to include diagrams, flowcharts, or tables to describe how you use it.

Include the relevant moral considerations as well.

Do they permit participation if you use human subjects?

What pain-reduction measures would you adopt if you used animals?

Read More: Population vs Sample | Examples

This part is a presentation of the findings you came to. If necessary, use graphs and charts; nevertheless, this part should also provide a summary of the key findings.

Don’t discuss the outcomes or speculate as to why anything occurred. None of the information you discovered from research needs to be mentioned. Employ appropriate techniques to explain the data. Don’t try to distort your facts to make it appear that you have accomplished more than you have.

→TABLES AND GRAPHS

Instead of just stating, “Here are the results that are drawn,” if you are presenting the data in the form of graphs or tables, explain a little bit about what the graphs or tables indicate, such as, “This graph or table represents the activity of enzyme at different temperatures.”

→DISCUSSION

Mention the most significant findings in discussion. Try to avoid just restating those from the results section.

How are your findings related to your question?
Do your data give support to the proposed theory?
Are the findings in line with the areas you looked at for the article?

Provide reasons if the results are surprising.

Is there another way to understand the outcomes?
What additional study is necessary to respond to your question?
How do your findings relate to the larger context?

→ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The acknowledgements section is optional. You can express gratitude to anyone who helped you during an experiment or who provided any other substantial assistance, such as discussing your methodology or offering suggestions on a manuscript.

→REFERENCES

There are only a handful possible arrangements for this section. You could, for instance, cite the text at main points. Alternatively, include a list of references in alphabetical order at the end of the article.

Research Paper

When referring to research papers, Dr. Jane Simonsen, a history professor, once said, “The work and design are your own, but you can’t do it without relying on the efforts and wisdom of others.”

Simonsen’s assumption is accurate. A research paper is a type of writing that is typically utilized in academic settings by college or university students who have been asked to look into and research a topic before coming to their conclusion.

The use of data from reliable sources to back up the student’s conclusions is both encouraged and frequently necessary. The length of research paper is affected by the complexity of the topic. A standard research paper can be anywhere from 50 to 200 pages long.

After gathering all necessary information from sources, a student’s work will be organized into the structure. Teachers frequently use this method to help students develop a balance in their writing abilities while promoting structural discipline and standard formatting.

According to A Research Guide for Students, research papers also use the subject’s original information, and after the student has gathered the data from the investigative stage, they are summarized with a clear and simple analysis and disposition, or thesis. In fact, the thesis statement for most research papers comes from the assigned topic.

Purpose of Research Paper

Writing an outstanding research paper is not merely a non-related task that you must complete in order to pass the examination. It is a task that teaches you a lot including:

How to research a specific topic?
How to fully express your understanding, conclusions, and analysis to a reader?

The more you focus on paper quality while in college or university, the more you’ll need to practice writing and research skills, which will enhance both your analytical and writing abilities. Nevertheless, if you perform poorly, the competition will be weaker, and it’s more possible that you’ll look back on this period and feel regret in the future for having missed your chance. Gaining the advantages of having the best writing abilities is crucial for this reason.

Format for Research Papers

There is a set format for research papers.

A brief introduction that often includes an overview of recent literature on the given topic researched and explains the author’s motivation for undertaking the research. This is significant because it indicates that the authors are aware of the current body of research and intend to contribute to it appropriately and they are not only conducting research on the topics that other people have already conducted.

The authors describe in detail how they can gather and evaluate the data in this section. The statistical analysis is also provided. The method section is very thorough since it is crucial for other researchers to be able to verify or employ the same methods.

Read More: Reliability vs Validity | Examples

The findings of your analysis can be discussed in this section. To demonstrate your findings, use graphs and charts.

Here, the authors provide an explanation of how the results were interpreted as well as a theory outlining the significance of current and future research.

References and citations can be added here. References are genuine books and articles that authors use to conduct their research and support their arguments.

Difference Between Research Paper and Research Article

1- A student at a university or college generally writes research papers as part of their coursework. A research paper is completed for review by a teacher or instructor. Whereas, a research article is a piece of writing that has recently undergone research or review by a professional in the field.

2- The number of references used also differs slightly. A reader can typically anticipate finding a lengthy bibliography in a research article, whereas a research paper won’t call for a reference list so extensive.

3- A research paper isn’t published in any publication unless it’s a guideline on how to write one, whereas a research article is submitted to periodicals, magazines or peer-reviewed journal.

4- A research article examines a potential or existing concept and discusses its effects. A thesis may be provided in a research paper, although it will not be as detailed.

5- Both differs in terms of formatting and length. A Longer in length whereas research article might be 15 pages long, but it’s not always the case. The structure used to convey the research will be different from that of a research paper, which might use double spacing and indenting. In contrast to a journal article, which explains its original findings to the reader, a research paper is written to demonstrate empirical data rather than to provide original research.

6- The title of the research paper will be centered, and the student’s name, class, date, and teacher will be in the left corner. Whereas the title will be top and centre in the research article. The names of the author(s) are listed below.

7- Research paper is for writing practice, while the research article is a specific practice for other practitioners. A research paper is more utilized to teach students how to write clearly and effectively on a subject, whereas the research article is designed to educate the reader on a subject or topic.

Types of journal articles

It is helpful to familiarise yourself with the different types of articles published by journals. Although it may appear there are a large number of types of articles published due to the wide variety of names they are published under, most articles published are one of the following types; Original Research, Review Articles, Short reports or Letters, Case Studies, Methodologies.

Original Research:

This is the most common type of journal manuscript used to publish full reports of data from research. It may be called an Original Article, Research Article, Research, or just Article, depending on the journal. The Original Research format is suitable for many different fields and different types of studies. It includes full Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion sections.

Short reports or Letters:

These papers communicate brief reports of data from original research that editors believe will be interesting to many researchers, and that will likely stimulate further research in the field. As they are relatively short the format is useful for scientists with results that are time sensitive (for example, those in highly competitive or quickly-changing disciplines). This format often has strict length limits, so some experimental details may not be published until the authors write a full Original Research manuscript. These papers are also sometimes called Brief communications .

Review Articles:

Review Articles provide a comprehensive summary of research on a certain topic, and a perspective on the state of the field and where it is heading. They are often written by leaders in a particular discipline after invitation from the editors of a journal. Reviews are often widely read (for example, by researchers looking for a full introduction to a field) and highly cited. Reviews commonly cite approximately 100 primary research articles.

TIP: If you would like to write a Review but have not been invited by a journal, be sure to check the journal website as some journals to not consider unsolicited Reviews. If the website does not mention whether Reviews are commissioned it is wise to send a pre-submission enquiry letter to the journal editor to propose your Review manuscript before you spend time writing it.

Case Studies:

These articles report specific instances of interesting phenomena. A goal of Case Studies is to make other researchers aware of the possibility that a specific phenomenon might occur. This type of study is often used in medicine to report the occurrence of previously unknown or emerging pathologies.

Methodologies or Methods

These articles present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method. The article should describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available.

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UCLA Library
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Articles, Books, and . . . ? Understanding the Many Types of Information Found in Libraries

Reference Sources

Academic Journals

Magazines and trade journals, conference papers, technical reports, anthologies.

Documents and Reports
Non-Text Content
Archival Materials

Because of their short length, articles often exclude background info and explanations, so they're usually the last stop in your research process, after you've narrowed down your topic and need to find very specific information.

The main thing to remember about articles is that they're almost always published in some larger work , like a journal, a newspaper, or an anthology. It's those "article containers" that define the types of articles, how you use them, and how you find them.

Articles are also the main reason we have so many databases . The Library Catalog lists everything we own, but only at the level of whole books and journals. It will tell you we have the New York Times, and for what dates, but it doesn't know what articles are in it. Search in UC Library Search using the "Articles, books, and more" scope will search all the databases we subscribe to and some we don't. If you find something we do not own, you can request it on Interlibrary Loan.

Physical Media

While newer journals and magazines are usually online, many older issues are still only available in paper. In addition, many of our online subscriptions explicitly don't include the latest material, specifically to encourage sales of print subscriptions. Older newspapers are usually transferred to microfilm.

Scholarly Sources

The terms academic or scholarly journal are usually synonymous with peer-reviewed , but check the journal's publishing policies to be sure. Trade journals, magazines, and newspapers are rarely peer-reviewed.

Primary or Secondary Sources

In the social sciences and humanities, articles are usually secondary sources; the exceptions are articles reporting original research findings from field studies. Primary source articles are more common in the physical and life sciences, where many articles are reporting primary research results from experiments, case studies, and clinical trials.

Clues that you're reading an academic article

Abstract at beginning
Footnotes or endnotes
Bilbliography or list of references

Articles in academic (peer-reviewed) journals are the primary forum for scholarly communication, where scholars introduce and debate new ideas and research. They're usually not written for laymen, and assume familiarity with other recent work in the field. Journal articles also tend to be narrowly focused, concentrating on analysis of one or two creative works or studies, though they may also contain review articles or literature reviews which summarize recent published work in a field.

In addition to regular articles, academic journals often include book reviews (of scholarly books ) and letters from readers commenting on recent articles.

Clues that you're reading a non -academic article

No abstract, footnotes or endnotes
Decorative photos
Advertisements

Unlike scholarly journals, magazines are written for a mainstream audience and are not peer-reviewed. A handful of academic journals (like Science and Nature ) blur the line between these two categories; they publish peer-reviewed articles, but combine them with news, opinions, and full-color photos in a magazine-style presentation.

Trade journals are targeted toward a specific profession or industry. Despite the name, they are usually not peer-reviewed. However, they sometimes represent a gray area between popular magazines and scholarly journals. When in doubt, ask your professor or TA whether a specific source is acceptable.

Newspapers as Primary Sources

Though usually written by journalists who were not direct witnesses to events, newspapers and news broadcasts may include quotes or interviews from people who were. In the absence of first-person accounts, contemporary news reports may be the closest thing to a primary source available.

Of all the content types listed here, newspapers are the fastest to publish. Use newspaper articles to find information about recent events and contemporary reports of/reactions to historic events.

News by UCLA Library Last Updated Apr 23, 2024 5197 views this year

Reviews are a type of article that can appear in any of the categories above. The type of publication will usually determine the type of review. Newspapers and magazines review movies, plays, general interest books, and consumer products. Academic journals review scholarly books.

Note that a review is not the same as scholarly analysis and criticism! Book reviews, even in scholarly journals, are usually not peer-reviewed.

Conference papers aren't always published and can be tricky to find . Recent conference papers are often online, along with the PowerPoint files or other materials used in the actual presentation. However, access may be limited to conference participants and/or members of the academic organization which sponsored the conference.

In paper formats, all of the papers from a certain conference may be re-printed in the conference proceedings . Search for Proceedings of the [name of conference] to find what's available, or ask for help from a librarian. But be aware that published proceedings may only include abstracts or even just the name of the presenter and the title of the presentation. This is especially true of poster presentations , which really are large graphic posters (which don't translate well to either printed books or computer monitors).

As the name implies, most technical reports are about research in the physical sciences or engineering. However, there are also technical reports produced in the life and social sciences,

Like conference papers , some technical reports are eventually transformed into academic journal articles , but they may also be released after a journal article to provide supplementary data that didn't fit within the article. Also like conference papers, technical reports can be hard to find , especially older reports which may only be available in microfiche . Ask for help from a librarian!

Anthologies are a cross-over example. They're books that contain articles (chapters). Anthologies may be collections of articles by a single author, or collections of articles on a theme from different authors chosen by an editor. Many anthologies reprint articles already published elsewhere, but some contain original works.

Anthologies are rarely peer-reviewed, but they still may be considered scholarly works, depending on the reputation of the authors and editors. Use the same criteria listed for scholarly books .

Of course, reprints of articles originally published in peer-reviewed journals retain their "scholarly" status. (Note that most style manuals have special rules for citing reprinted works.)

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Last Updated: Mar 1, 2024 10:55 AM
URL: https://guides.library.ucla.edu/content-types

Difference Between Journal Article and Research Paper

Edited by Diffzy | Updated on: April 30, 2023

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Introduction

Reading material that is directly related to one's field of study is a highly useful tool that may be used to improve one's knowledge. Reading books, papers, and articles that are pertinent to a topic holds a whole notion for elevating one's level of knowledge as well as aggregating one's grades. Some of the vehicles that are utilized in professional and academic learning include journals, articles published in journals, and research papers.

It is possible to refer to as a "journal article" any piece of writing that has been accepted for publication in a journal. However, journals publish a variety of papers, and while some of those pieces require original research to be submitted, others do not.

However, the term "research article" is reserved exclusively for those types of articles that call for their original research. This category comprises, most frequently, empirical studies as well as pieces based on original research. Review articles, articles presenting opinions and points of view, comments, letters, and other types of writing do not normally fit within the category of research papers.

Journal Article vs Research Paper

The main difference between a research paper and a journal article is that journal articles are intended for an academic audience and are comprehensive, well researched, and conceptual. On the other hand, research papers focus on and investigate a single viewpoint in-depth, substantiating their claims with relevant theories, scientific standpoints, and evaluations supported by the extensive study.

A compilation of articles on a variety of subjects is known as a journal. There are many different kinds of journals, including personal journals, academic journals, art journals, and so on. Regarding the academic side of things, however, we have a lot more to learn about scholarly journals. It is a collection of papers covering a wide range of subject areas in one volume. It is a compilation of several various work compilations into one volume. In contrast to a research paper, it is made up of articles on a variety of subjects.

When writing research papers, a reference to this source is frequently required. It is a magazine that comes out regularly and is based on the concept that many different subjects and situations are related or correlated to one another. When compared to the information presented in a paper, the depth of coverage supplied in a journal is shallower. As was just mentioned, a journal serves as a point of reference for a variety of people and organizations who are engaged in research.

A research paper can be thought of as essentially a sheet of information on a particular subject. According to the conventional definition, "it is a descriptive context in the form of words or text," which we may find if we search it up. It gives its readers knowledge that is both in-depth and pertinent regarding a particular subject matter. This is an investigation into a particular issue, and by the time it's finished, the authors hope to have proposed a workable solution to that issue.

The majority of the work is done by teams consisting of two or three people. It might be as long as twenty pages or even more, and it consists of a comprehensive study of a single distinct subject. Having said that, one thing that needs to be made clear is that the length of it is contingent on the setting of the study.

However, a research paper can be anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 words long, whereas a journal can only be between 5,000 and 10,000 words long at most. This is the primary distinction between the two types of writing. Because it is a periodic publication, a magazine can supply you with a list of regional, national, and even international conferences.

Because it is a periodic publication, as was previously said, it also notifies you of upcoming conference events. Publication in a scholarly journal is a goal for many students and young researchers, particularly if the work being submitted is their very first research paper.

Difference Between Journal Article and Research Paper in Tabular Form
What is a Journal Article?

Articles published in journals are significantly shorter than novels and are focused on a narrow range of subjects.

A compilation of articles (much like a magazine) that is published consistently during the year is known as a journal. The most recent research is published in journals, and the articles published in journals are produced by specialists for other experts. They could be printed, published online, or published in both mediums simultaneously.

If you have a writing assignment and your instructor asks you to use "journal articles" in your research, you might find yourself wondering if she means articles from popular magazines and newspapers. If you do find yourself wondering this, the answer is yes, she does mean articles from popular magazines and newspapers. On the other hand, papers published in journals are substantially dissimilar to those published in periodicals. For one thing, the primary objective of journal articles is research. In most cases, these are scholarly publications that have been vetted by other experts in the field and were written by experts specifically for other professionals.

Journal articles are published regularly, and each article may have anywhere from one to several authors who contributed to its completion.

A journal article is an experiential piece that can take on a variety of forms. For instance, a journal article may have started as an analysis of a piece that was published in a newspaper, a review, a proposal, or any number of other academic and research-based contributions.

In a nutshell, an article published in a journal can either be scholarly or non-academic.

An article published in a journal can also serve as a research paper, which can then be presented in a variety of settings.

It is beneficial to become familiar with the various kinds of papers that are published in journals. Although there might be a large number of different types of articles published due to the wide variety of names that they are published under, the majority of the articles that are published fall into one of the following categories: original research, review articles, short reports or letters, case studies, and methodologies.

What is a Research Paper?

Writing assignments in academia frequently take the shape of research papers. Students and academics are required to locate knowledge on a topic (also known as conducting research), take a stance on the topic, and present support (or evidence) for that viewpoint within the context of a structured report to complete a research paper.

The word "research paper" can also be used to refer to an academic publication that presents the findings of one's original study or provides an analysis of the findings of research carried out by others. Before they can be approved for publishing in an academic journal, the vast majority of scholarly works are subjected to a procedure known as peer review.

A research paper can be defined as any type of document that requires the author to research a specific topic. Research papers, in contrast to essays, which are frequently and frequently based substantially on the author's viewpoint and are written from the author's point of view, are based on facts.

To write a research paper, you are required to first think of anything you have an opinion about, then do study and become an expert on that issue, and finally, support your thoughts and statements with facts discovered through your extensive research.

A research paper is the result of the author spending time collecting and analyzing data, as well as thinking for themselves. When academics are looking for solutions to questions, the first thing they do is begin searching for material that can be used to either expand, utilize, approve or refute the findings.

To put it another way, research papers are the end products of processes that involve taking into consideration written works and adhering to certain specifications. In addition, scientists do study to build and expand a variety of hypotheses, which might lead to the development of social or technological aspects of human science. To be able to create papers that are relevant to the research, however, they need to have a definition of the research, as well as its structure, characteristics, and types.

Quite frequently, students are tasked with writing research papers. Students, scholars, and scientists eventually find themselves in a scenario in which they are required to answer particular questions by referencing sources. In its most fundamental form, a research paper is one of the forms of papers that can be written by academics in which they investigate questions or subjects, search for secondary sources, and compose papers on predetermined topics.

For instance, if a person is given the task of writing a research paper on certain causes of global warming or any other subject, they are required to first compose a research proposal on the subject, during which they must evaluate significant aspects and reputable sources. Writing an essay tends to center on the author's own experiences and observations, but writing a research paper requires covering sources and adhering to academic norms.

In addition to this, researchers are obligated to follow the format of research papers. Therefore, those who write research papers need to conduct a study on their themes, cover important features of those issues, process reputable articles, and appropriately structure their final studies.

Main Differences Between Journal Article and Research Paper in Points
A research paper is an in-depth investigation into 'A' particular question, which may again have multiple other sub-questions that need to be re-found or revisited. On the other hand, journal articles are typically written to enhance one's knowledge in a particular field, domain of learning, or related to a professional approach that is helpful in field-specific understanding.
A research paper is an in-depth investigation of something that has already been presented, whereas journal articles are based on the author's perspective.
According to the prior notion, a journal or paper could be a research paper or a current trending news article based on any beliefs that involve personal experience and learnings. On the other hand, a research paper is an in-depth investigation into the readability of conceptual information through the presentation of data in the form of graphs, diagrams, case studies, and so on.
It takes some time to finish the research paper because it requires the study of a case, a sample of individuals, a demographic area, etc., all of which take some time.
whereas the effort involved in producing a journal paper can be completed in as little as a week or as much as a few months. However, it is not as in-depth as a research article.
If a research paper is written and extensively worked on by, for example, a department, domain, or organization, then the research paper will be patented. On the other hand, a journal article is open to the public and can be read, shared, reviewed, and presented without violating any copyright mandates or policies that are in place. A journal article cannot be protected by a patent.
The presentation of the content can be made to flow naturally and can be written in a short amount of time. On the other hand, a research paper needs to include considerable rough work, as well as a paper that is written methodically and includes appropriate citations in the appropriate locations.
A research paper is not driven through any type of ratings and is primarily concerned with its presentation and discoveries to be made known, however, a journal article does run after ratings because, in today's world, everything is moving to digitalization.

It is important to be aware that a journal article and a research paper each have their distinct audience, purpose, reach out, and most importantly – worth as a medium of knowledge. This can be shown by connecting the dot of the specifically demarcated six-pointers that have been presented above.

https://gssrr.org/index.php/gssrr/How-to-Publish-Research-Paper
https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/journal-author/types-of-journal-manuscripts/1356

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Difference Between Research Paper and Research Article

Difference Between Research Paper and Article

The research is considered as the movement which has gained a significant place in an academic world and that’s why most of the assignment need specialized working framework and exploration. The research papers as well as research articles are a bit of compilation which is needed for the basic exam, understanding, and exhibiting the exceptional aptitudes for the research and studies.

Research Article

What will be the next step for a scholar or a scientist who has arrived to the solution of the problem or had created a discovery which he wants to show to the world? Well, the best method of letting world know regarding your knowledge or wisdom of yours is write the research article. A research article is a writing which comprises of the genuine idea of research along with the relevant findings and data. It gets published by the famous scientific journals which are related to the working area to which your paper pertains. You can call research paper as the writing or a paper which tells people about the path of breaking research or the finding with the clinical data for supporting that finding.

A Research article gets a touch of building which has a unique research along with the relevant info and disclosures. It is a kind of exploration article which tells readers who concerned about the breaking the finding or researching with the info to strengthen the finding.

Significance of Research Article

A research article can be an important source – which means that it can provide a great reference for writing the thesis about the relevant topic. It has a report of the strategies and the aftereffects of the unique research done by the researchers. The kind of study done may get fluctuated (it may have the format like examining, reviewing, meeting etc.), eve then in each of the case, the raw info is gathered and then broken down by the researcher and results are drawn as per the investigations done during research. So, the whole working process depends on the unique situation and whatever dialect you choose, your article must be able to transmit your whole research and findings in the most easier and reliable way.

Format of a Research Article

Make a title particular enough to illustrate the whole content of your article, however not to be so technical that just specialists could understand it. A title of article must be appropriate for objected audience.
A title of article generally illustrates the subject material of article like, “effect of alcohol on academic performance”
A title may also few times summarizes the overall results in an effective way like “students who drink, get low grades”
A researcher who did research and wrote down article is usually regarded as the first author of article
All those articles which get published, there are some other people who have done substantial contributions, so they are regarded as authors. Also, you can ask permission of your mentor before including his/her name as one of the co-author or author.
Abstract is a kind of summary which is published along with the research article, showing a preview of whole research to the reader. Suh summaries can also get published separately as the bibliographical sources, like Biologic al Abstracts. Thru let other of the scientists to scan a large bulk of the scientific literature fast, and then decide which of the research articles they need to read in complete depth. An abstract of research article must be a bit less technical as compared to the content of article itself.
An abstract must of one paragraph – 100 to 250 words, which gives a summary of the objective, methods, findings, and conclusion of article.
It is not very easier to give all the info in just one paragraph. Initiate by mentioning the summary which involves whatever you feel is significant to mention, and then slowly prune it by cutting down its size by removing the unwanted details, while retaining the important concepts.
Don’t add citations or abbreviations in the content of your abstract. It must be able to read without any footnotes.

INTRODUCTION

What was the objective question of your research? How can it be interesting? This part of the article gives a summary of the related literature so that your reader gets an understanding of the purpose of question and what’s so interesting about it. The introduction should be of 2 to 4 paragraphs. End it with statement giving explanation of the question.

MATERIALS OR METHODS

The way you answer your question is given in this part. There must be sufficient info included here for allowing reader to know about research. Search other articles which are published before of your subject to have some idea about this section of article. If you own a complex protocol, it can help you in including the figures, flow charts, or tables for explaining the ways you use. Also, mention the related moral considerations. If you utilized the human related subjects, do they allow to participate? If you utilized animals, what considerations do you take for reducing pain?

This section includes the presentation of results which you have made. Use charts and graphs if required, however also give a summary of main findings in this section. Don’t mention the results or predict as for telling why anything happened. You don’t have to mention any of the data which you have gotten from study. As it is not your notebook, it is a research article. Use suitable ways of elaborating the data. Don’t tend to manipulate your data for making it look as you have done a lot than what you have actually done.

GRAPHS AND TABLES

If you show the data in from of graphs or tables, mention a bit about what is your graph or table about like you can say “this graph or table represents the activity of enzyme at different temperatures” instead of saying that “these are the results which are drawn”. Also, don’t utilize graphs or tables for making your article fancy. Just summarize the data in them.

Mention the highly important results there but don’t only repeat what you got in section of results. How your results are linked with your question? Do your data support the given hypothesis? Are the results consistent with what you have investigated in the article? If the results are unexpected, tend to give reasons. If there some other way of interpreting the results? What more research is required for answering your question? How your results can fit in the bigger picture?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The section of acknowledgements is optional. You can give thanks to the persons who either aided you during experimentation, or made any other significant contribution, like giving comments on manuscript, discussing your protocol and so on.

There are few possible ways of organizing this section. Like, you can kite the literature at suitable places within the text. Or, add a list of references at the end of article in an alphabetical order.

Research Paper

Research is the work which has great importance in the world of academics, and that’s the reason most of your assignments need research and the process of technical writing initiates even at the earliest stages of school. The students are mostly asked for submitting the research paper as the high school begins, and as they come across the actual concept while reaching to the colleges or universities for higher studies, they are considered professional in writing research paper. But, the research paper is not only the assignment done by the students as like the others done by the scientists and scholars or get published in the journals which are also sometimes called as the research papers.

Research paper is also considered as the movement which has pointed strong centrality in the scholastic. So in any of the case, the examine papers are not only like the errand papers made buy the understudies as those which are made by the scientists and researchers. Moreover, the distributed in different diaries are also recommended as the research papers.

Significance of Research Paper

Writing a fine research paper is not only a not-related task why you require for doing in order to get yourself passed. It is a task via which you learn a lot like,

How to do research on a given topic
How to express the understanding coherently, conclusions and analysis regarding the topic for someone else who may not or may get informed on the topic you want to work on.

More you work on the quality of paper during your college, more you need to work for improving the writing skills and research, and better your analytical and writing skills will become. But, lesser you perform, lesser will be the competition and more likely you will look back at this time and regret in the later years that you have wasted your chance. This is the reason why getting benefit of having the finest writing skills is very important.

Format of a Research Paper

The Research papers follow a specific format. Here it is:

There is a brief introduction which will usually comprise the review of the current literature on given topic researched, and elaborate the rationale of study of the author. This is significant as it mentions that the authors are well aware of the current research and plan to contribute to the current body of the research in an appropriate way (I.e. they are not only performing what other people have already done).

In this section, the authors elaborate how they can analyze and collect the data. The statistical analysis is also included. The section of method is very detailed, as it is very important as other researchers can be able to get verified or use the same methods.

In this section, you can describe the results of your analysis. Use graphs and charts here to illustrate your results.

Here the authors explain the interpretation of the results and include theory of the importance of the current and future research.

You can add references and citations here. References are actually books and articles which authors use to plan the research and for supporting the discussion.

Major Difference Between Research Paper and Research Article

Few of the major differences amid research article and research paper are given below:

There doesn’t exist any such difference amid research article and research paper. Both have genuine research with the results.
There is the trend of referring to the academic papers and term papers done by the students in colleges as the research papers whereas research articles are submitted by the scientists and scholars with the groundbreaking research are known as the research articles.
The research articles get published in the famous scientific journals where the research papers are done by the students don’t come in journals.

Comparison Between Research Paper and Research Article

Related posts, research paper example, how to write a motivational statement, how to write a good psychology research proposal, how to write a mechanical engineering research paper, apa research paper parts and sections, how to research a topic, how to write a personal essay, research project outline example, research paper format, what is a dissertation paper.

I have pickedup slot from your material which will greatly be of help. Thanks so much.

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Breaking news, yale professor accuses columbia prez shafik of plagiarism, ‘intellectual theft’ in resurfaced 1994 research paper.

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Embattled Columbia University president Nemat “Minouche” Shafik screwed a former underling out of credit on a research paper published 30 years ago, a Yale University professor claims.

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak posted the bombshell allegations in a blistering thread on X early Friday, juxtaposing images of a 1992 report Shafik co-authored for World Bank with researcher Sushenjit Bandyopadhyay, along with a journal published in Oxford Economic Papers two years later in which Bandyopadhyay’s name was removed.

Yale management and economics professor Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

Mobarak, an economics and management professor at Yale, told The Post the findings and research cited in both papers are pretty much equal.

“It got rewritten, but fundamentally it’s the same paper,” he alleged.

“We can’t get in the room and [learn] what sentences did he write and what sentences she wrote, but what we do know is his contribution was sufficient to warrant co-authorship [in 1992],” he added. “What is not common is for someone to be a co-author and then suddenly their name is taken off.”

Instead, Bandyopadhyay is only “thanked” in an acknowledgement section in the back of the 1994 published journal — which screams of “power asymmetry” considering Shafik was then Bandyopadhyay’s boss, alleged Mobarak.

Bandyopadhyay declined comment when asked whether he felt slighted.

However, Mobarak, also a former World Bank consultant and University of Maryland graduate, said he spoke to Bandyopadhyay about the issue and that Bandyopadhyay believes he should have been credited as a co-author in the second paper. The professor conceded Bandyopadhyay never said anything “negative” about the Columbia president.

Columbia University president Minouche Shafik

“This [1994] paper is lifted almost entirely from a 1992 report coauthored with consultant not credited in the publication,” wrote Mobarak on X. “This is wholesale intellectual theft, not subtle plagiarism.”

At the time both papers were written, Shafik was a vice president for World Bank and Bandyopadhyay, a consultant who also attended the University of Maryland.

Screenshot of an economic research paper

Mobarak’s allegations echo plagiarism accusations leveled against former Harvard University president Claudine Gay, who eventually resigned in disgrace in January .

Columbia University spokesperson Ben Chang shot down the Yale professor’s claims, saying “this is an absurd attempt at running a well-known playbook, and it has no credibility.”

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When Patients Do Their Own Research

At its best, medicine will be a process of shared decision making, and doctors need to be prepared.

Futurist illustration of doctor holding notes

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Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

Miscarriage early in pregnancy is very common—roughly one-fifth of detected pregnancies are thought to end in miscarriage, mostly in the first trimester. After a single miscarriage, patients are typically told that no further testing is needed; most women go on to have healthy pregnancies.

But after multiple miscarriages, doctors and patients begin a process of figuring out what is going on. In these situations, a lot of patients will take information gathering into their own hands. They’ll compile ideas from Google, WebMD, chat boards, support groups, friends, and friends of friends. Patients may arrive at their doctor’s office with file folders of information, a cobbled-together idea of their possibilities. Meanwhile, doctors have clinical knowledge, but they may struggle—especially given their limited time—to engage with their patients’ ideas and guide them.

Medicine wasn’t always this sort of shared process. Not long ago, medical decision making was largely left to doctors. Patients were a passive bunch, arriving at the doctor with their concerns and symptoms, and departing with their doctor’s orders. But today patients have incredible access to information online and elsewhere, and this has prompted a shift to what is sometimes called “shared decision making”: patients and doctors, together, sharing the burden of making consequential health choices.

Emily Oster: Thinking about pregnancy like an economist

This approach sounds great in principle. Shouldn’t patients be involved in decision making about their own health? In the area of obstetrics, the alternative brings to mind deliveries of the 1950s—white-coated doctors smoking cigarettes in their office while women labor in “twilight sleep,” even, in many cases, strapped to the bed. Surely if women had been involved, they would have opted for something a bit more comfortable.

In practice, though, shared decision making can be a source of frustration and confusion, for both sides. From the patient side, it can feel like doctors are either expecting too much engagement— Isn’t it your job to know what to do?— or not listening and not taking the patient’s ideas and preferences seriously. Sometimes it feels like all of this at once. From the medical side, frustration also comes in several forms—with patients who do not want to engage with the decision, and with those who do but are unwilling to listen to expert advice. Why won’t they listen to me? A patient who arrives with her own research can give the impression that she believes her Google search makes her an expert in medicine.

We, the authors of this article, come at this from both angles—one of us is a doctor, and one of us is an expert in statistics who has made a career of helping millions of pregnant people sort through data to make their own best decisions. We both believe that shared decision making in medicine can work, but many doctor-patient interactions today are not working. In our new book, The Unexpected , we try to provide a road map for improving this interaction, focusing on pregnancy. Our idea is simple. Two things are missing from this conversation: some common knowledge, and a script.

First, patients cannot engage with shared decision making if they do not understand the basics of their condition. To return to the example of miscarriage: A very large share of first-trimester miscarriages are a result of chromosomal abnormalities. If a patient does not know how chromosomes work in conception and what might influence them, discussing miscarriage prevention will be difficult. A patient doesn’t possess a doctor’s understanding of their condition—this would be unrealistic—but acquiring basic knowledge will allow patients to most effectively hear and process what is being said.

In particular, patients may benefit from getting a handle on the fundamental medical terminology associated with whatever symptoms they are presenting. Unfamiliar jargon can spark fear far beyond what one would feel if she knew what was being said. “Antiphospholipid antibody syndrome” sounds terrifying if you don’t know that, for many, it’s a treatable condition. When patients do not understand, many will shut down, unable to ask the questions they have or engage with the choices they need to make.

As a result, before doctors ask people to engage with decisions about their health, they need to prepare them. Our book tries to do this for people facing complicated pregnancy conditions. In other cases—cancer treatment, diabetes, other chronic illnesses—different resources exist. Patients should do some homework before they go to the doctor’s office.

The second thing these conversations need is a script. If patients and their doctor had limitless time to talk, then maybe it would be okay to enter the conversation with only a vague idea of the purpose. But time is limited, and that means a script is key, prioritizing questions where the answers matter for decisions.

To return to the miscarriage example, a script might start with the details of what happened. Knowing exactly when in pregnancy a loss occurred, what kind of testing followed it, and how many times it has happened will shape next steps. A second question is whether there are clues as to why it happened, which will inform whether it will happen again. A script might end by talking about what can be done to decrease risk, if anything.

Read: When evidence says no, but doctors say yes

In the best form of this conversation, the doctor brings a deep understanding of what might be going on medically with the patient, the range of possible tests, and what those tests might reveal to the patient. The patient brings a knowledge of their own preferences and their own emotional state. How much information do they want to know? Would they be willing to use more complex medical treatments if they were recommended? Are they even ready to engage emotionally with thinking about trying for pregnancy again?

The central recognition here is that shared decision making isn’t about both sides bringing the same thing to the table and deliberating about it. It’s about two different types of expertise—expertise in medicine on the part of the doctor, and expertise in herself on the part of the patient. Seeing this, in turn, can help the doctors and the patient both recognize when one decision maker should be paramount, or when a decision requires input from both.

An emergency situation—when, say, a person has been in a bike accident, his blood pressure is low, and he is bleeding from his head—isn’t the time for shared decision making. This is when the medical side takes over. No patient needs to be asked whether they think it’s a good idea to scan their head for a skull fracture. At the other end of the spectrum are decisions such as prenatal genetic screening and testing, which are in many cases almost exclusively about patient values and preferences.

Most decisions fall somewhere in between, requiring medical input but with room for patients’ preferences to play a role. Attempting a vaginal birth after a C-section is an example here—both a repeat Cesarean and an attempted vaginal birth have their risks and benefits. The medical expertise comes in explaining these risks and benefits, but the decision for many women here should come down to their own preferences.

With better understanding, clear scripts, and a sense of when different decision makers should dominate, we believe there is space for some decision making to be truly shared. But one more crucial element should be present: trust. Sometimes the desire by patients to play a role in their medical care can seem like a lack of trust in their doctors. And on the flip side, when patients do not feel like their concerns, ideas, or preferences are being listened to, they can lose trust in their provider to find what is best for them . Good decisions require the trust to recognize that we are all rowing in the same direction, and the willingness to engage so we can get there.

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Open access
Published: 18 April 2024

Research ethics and artificial intelligence for global health: perspectives from the global forum on bioethics in research

James Shaw 1 , 13 ,
Joseph Ali 2 , 3 ,
Caesar A. Atuire 4 , 5 ,
Phaik Yeong Cheah 6 ,
Armando Guio Español 7 ,
Judy Wawira Gichoya 8 ,
Adrienne Hunt 9 ,
Daudi Jjingo 10 ,
Katherine Littler 9 ,
Daniela Paolotti 11 &
Effy Vayena 12

BMC Medical Ethics volume 25 , Article number: 46 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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The ethical governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in health care and public health continues to be an urgent issue for attention in policy, research, and practice. In this paper we report on central themes related to challenges and strategies for promoting ethics in research involving AI in global health, arising from the Global Forum on Bioethics in Research (GFBR), held in Cape Town, South Africa in November 2022.

The GFBR is an annual meeting organized by the World Health Organization and supported by the Wellcome Trust, the US National Institutes of Health, the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) and the South African MRC. The forum aims to bring together ethicists, researchers, policymakers, research ethics committee members and other actors to engage with challenges and opportunities specifically related to research ethics. In 2022 the focus of the GFBR was “Ethics of AI in Global Health Research”. The forum consisted of 6 case study presentations, 16 governance presentations, and a series of small group and large group discussions. A total of 87 participants attended the forum from 31 countries around the world, representing disciplines of bioethics, AI, health policy, health professional practice, research funding, and bioinformatics. In this paper, we highlight central insights arising from GFBR 2022.

We describe the significance of four thematic insights arising from the forum: (1) Appropriateness of building AI, (2) Transferability of AI systems, (3) Accountability for AI decision-making and outcomes, and (4) Individual consent. We then describe eight recommendations for governance leaders to enhance the ethical governance of AI in global health research, addressing issues such as AI impact assessments, environmental values, and fair partnerships.

Conclusions

The 2022 Global Forum on Bioethics in Research illustrated several innovations in ethical governance of AI for global health research, as well as several areas in need of urgent attention internationally. This summary is intended to inform international and domestic efforts to strengthen research ethics and support the evolution of governance leadership to meet the demands of AI in global health research.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

The ethical governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in health care and public health continues to be an urgent issue for attention in policy, research, and practice [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. Beyond the growing number of AI applications being implemented in health care, capabilities of AI models such as Large Language Models (LLMs) expand the potential reach and significance of AI technologies across health-related fields [ 4 , 5 ]. Discussion about effective, ethical governance of AI technologies has spanned a range of governance approaches, including government regulation, organizational decision-making, professional self-regulation, and research ethics review [ 6 , 7 , 8 ]. In this paper, we report on central themes related to challenges and strategies for promoting ethics in research involving AI in global health research, arising from the Global Forum on Bioethics in Research (GFBR), held in Cape Town, South Africa in November 2022. Although applications of AI for research, health care, and public health are diverse and advancing rapidly, the insights generated at the forum remain highly relevant from a global health perspective. After summarizing important context for work in this domain, we highlight categories of ethical issues emphasized at the forum for attention from a research ethics perspective internationally. We then outline strategies proposed for research, innovation, and governance to support more ethical AI for global health.

In this paper, we adopt the definition of AI systems provided by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as our starting point. Their definition states that an AI system is “a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing real or virtual environments. AI systems are designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy” [ 9 ]. The conceptualization of an algorithm as helping to constitute an AI system, along with hardware, other elements of software, and a particular context of use, illustrates the wide variety of ways in which AI can be applied. We have found it useful to differentiate applications of AI in research as those classified as “AI systems for discovery” and “AI systems for intervention”. An AI system for discovery is one that is intended to generate new knowledge, for example in drug discovery or public health research in which researchers are seeking potential targets for intervention, innovation, or further research. An AI system for intervention is one that directly contributes to enacting an intervention in a particular context, for example informing decision-making at the point of care or assisting with accuracy in a surgical procedure.

The mandate of the GFBR is to take a broad view of what constitutes research and its regulation in global health, with special attention to bioethics in Low- and Middle- Income Countries. AI as a group of technologies demands such a broad view. AI development for health occurs in a variety of environments, including universities and academic health sciences centers where research ethics review remains an important element of the governance of science and innovation internationally [ 10 , 11 ]. In these settings, research ethics committees (RECs; also known by different names such as Institutional Review Boards or IRBs) make decisions about the ethical appropriateness of projects proposed by researchers and other institutional members, ultimately determining whether a given project is allowed to proceed on ethical grounds [ 12 ].

However, research involving AI for health also takes place in large corporations and smaller scale start-ups, which in some jurisdictions fall outside the scope of research ethics regulation. In the domain of AI, the question of what constitutes research also becomes blurred. For example, is the development of an algorithm itself considered a part of the research process? Or only when that algorithm is tested under the formal constraints of a systematic research methodology? In this paper we take an inclusive view, in which AI development is included in the definition of research activity and within scope for our inquiry, regardless of the setting in which it takes place. This broad perspective characterizes the approach to “research ethics” we take in this paper, extending beyond the work of RECs to include the ethical analysis of the wide range of activities that constitute research as the generation of new knowledge and intervention in the world.

Ethical governance of AI in global health

The ethical governance of AI for global health has been widely discussed in recent years. The World Health Organization (WHO) released its guidelines on ethics and governance of AI for health in 2021, endorsing a set of six ethical principles and exploring the relevance of those principles through a variety of use cases. The WHO guidelines also provided an overview of AI governance, defining governance as covering “a range of steering and rule-making functions of governments and other decision-makers, including international health agencies, for the achievement of national health policy objectives conducive to universal health coverage.” (p. 81) The report usefully provided a series of recommendations related to governance of seven domains pertaining to AI for health: data, benefit sharing, the private sector, the public sector, regulation, policy observatories/model legislation, and global governance. The report acknowledges that much work is yet to be done to advance international cooperation on AI governance, especially related to prioritizing voices from Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) in global dialogue.

One important point emphasized in the WHO report that reinforces the broader literature on global governance of AI is the distribution of responsibility across a wide range of actors in the AI ecosystem. This is especially important to highlight when focused on research for global health, which is specifically about work that transcends national borders. Alami et al. (2020) discussed the unique risks raised by AI research in global health, ranging from the unavailability of data in many LMICs required to train locally relevant AI models to the capacity of health systems to absorb new AI technologies that demand the use of resources from elsewhere in the system. These observations illustrate the need to identify the unique issues posed by AI research for global health specifically, and the strategies that can be employed by all those implicated in AI governance to promote ethically responsible use of AI in global health research.

RECs and the regulation of research involving AI

RECs represent an important element of the governance of AI for global health research, and thus warrant further commentary as background to our paper. Despite the importance of RECs, foundational questions have been raised about their capabilities to accurately understand and address ethical issues raised by studies involving AI. Rahimzadeh et al. (2023) outlined how RECs in the United States are under-prepared to align with recent federal policy requiring that RECs review data sharing and management plans with attention to the unique ethical issues raised in AI research for health [ 13 ]. Similar research in South Africa identified variability in understanding of existing regulations and ethical issues associated with health-related big data sharing and management among research ethics committee members [ 14 , 15 ]. The effort to address harms accruing to groups or communities as opposed to individuals whose data are included in AI research has also been identified as a unique challenge for RECs [ 16 , 17 ]. Doerr and Meeder (2022) suggested that current regulatory frameworks for research ethics might actually prevent RECs from adequately addressing such issues, as they are deemed out of scope of REC review [ 16 ]. Furthermore, research in the United Kingdom and Canada has suggested that researchers using AI methods for health tend to distinguish between ethical issues and social impact of their research, adopting an overly narrow view of what constitutes ethical issues in their work [ 18 ].

The challenges for RECs in adequately addressing ethical issues in AI research for health care and public health exceed a straightforward survey of ethical considerations. As Ferretti et al. (2021) contend, some capabilities of RECs adequately cover certain issues in AI-based health research, such as the common occurrence of conflicts of interest where researchers who accept funds from commercial technology providers are implicitly incentivized to produce results that align with commercial interests [ 12 ]. However, some features of REC review require reform to adequately meet ethical needs. Ferretti et al. outlined weaknesses of RECs that are longstanding and those that are novel to AI-related projects, proposing a series of directions for development that are regulatory, procedural, and complementary to REC functionality. The work required on a global scale to update the REC function in response to the demands of research involving AI is substantial.

These issues take greater urgency in the context of global health [ 19 ]. Teixeira da Silva (2022) described the global practice of “ethics dumping”, where researchers from high income countries bring ethically contentious practices to RECs in low-income countries as a strategy to gain approval and move projects forward [ 20 ]. Although not yet systematically documented in AI research for health, risk of ethics dumping in AI research is high. Evidence is already emerging of practices of “health data colonialism”, in which AI researchers and developers from large organizations in high-income countries acquire data to build algorithms in LMICs to avoid stricter regulations [ 21 ]. This specific practice is part of a larger collection of practices that characterize health data colonialism, involving the broader exploitation of data and the populations they represent primarily for commercial gain [ 21 , 22 ]. As an additional complication, AI algorithms trained on data from high-income contexts are unlikely to apply in straightforward ways to LMIC settings [ 21 , 23 ]. In the context of global health, there is widespread acknowledgement about the need to not only enhance the knowledge base of REC members about AI-based methods internationally, but to acknowledge the broader shifts required to encourage their capabilities to more fully address these and other ethical issues associated with AI research for health [ 8 ].

Although RECs are an important part of the story of the ethical governance of AI for global health research, they are not the only part. The responsibilities of supra-national entities such as the World Health Organization, national governments, organizational leaders, commercial AI technology providers, health care professionals, and other groups continue to be worked out internationally. In this context of ongoing work, examining issues that demand attention and strategies to address them remains an urgent and valuable task.

The GFBR is an annual meeting organized by the World Health Organization and supported by the Wellcome Trust, the US National Institutes of Health, the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) and the South African MRC. The forum aims to bring together ethicists, researchers, policymakers, REC members and other actors to engage with challenges and opportunities specifically related to research ethics. Each year the GFBR meeting includes a series of case studies and keynotes presented in plenary format to an audience of approximately 100 people who have applied and been competitively selected to attend, along with small-group breakout discussions to advance thinking on related issues. The specific topic of the forum changes each year, with past topics including ethical issues in research with people living with mental health conditions (2021), genome editing (2019), and biobanking/data sharing (2018). The forum is intended to remain grounded in the practical challenges of engaging in research ethics, with special interest in low resource settings from a global health perspective. A post-meeting fellowship scheme is open to all LMIC participants, providing a unique opportunity to apply for funding to further explore and address the ethical challenges that are identified during the meeting.

In 2022, the focus of the GFBR was “Ethics of AI in Global Health Research”. The forum consisted of 6 case study presentations (both short and long form) reporting on specific initiatives related to research ethics and AI for health, and 16 governance presentations (both short and long form) reporting on actual approaches to governing AI in different country settings. A keynote presentation from Professor Effy Vayena addressed the topic of the broader context for AI ethics in a rapidly evolving field. A total of 87 participants attended the forum from 31 countries around the world, representing disciplines of bioethics, AI, health policy, health professional practice, research funding, and bioinformatics. The 2-day forum addressed a wide range of themes. The conference report provides a detailed overview of each of the specific topics addressed while a policy paper outlines the cross-cutting themes (both documents are available at the GFBR website: https://www.gfbr.global/past-meetings/16th-forum-cape-town-south-africa-29-30-november-2022/ ). As opposed to providing a detailed summary in this paper, we aim to briefly highlight central issues raised, solutions proposed, and the challenges facing the research ethics community in the years to come.

In this way, our primary aim in this paper is to present a synthesis of the challenges and opportunities raised at the GFBR meeting and in the planning process, followed by our reflections as a group of authors on their significance for governance leaders in the coming years. We acknowledge that the views represented at the meeting and in our results are a partial representation of the universe of views on this topic; however, the GFBR leadership invested a great deal of resources in convening a deeply diverse and thoughtful group of researchers and practitioners working on themes of bioethics related to AI for global health including those based in LMICs. We contend that it remains rare to convene such a strong group for an extended time and believe that many of the challenges and opportunities raised demand attention for more ethical futures of AI for health. Nonetheless, our results are primarily descriptive and are thus not explicitly grounded in a normative argument. We make effort in the Discussion section to contextualize our results by describing their significance and connecting them to broader efforts to reform global health research and practice.

Uniquely important ethical issues for AI in global health research

Presentations and group dialogue over the course of the forum raised several issues for consideration, and here we describe four overarching themes for the ethical governance of AI in global health research. Brief descriptions of each issue can be found in Table 1 . Reports referred to throughout the paper are available at the GFBR website provided above.

The first overarching thematic issue relates to the appropriateness of building AI technologies in response to health-related challenges in the first place. Case study presentations referred to initiatives where AI technologies were highly appropriate, such as in ear shape biometric identification to more accurately link electronic health care records to individual patients in Zambia (Alinani Simukanga). Although important ethical issues were raised with respect to privacy, trust, and community engagement in this initiative, the AI-based solution was appropriately matched to the challenge of accurately linking electronic records to specific patient identities. In contrast, forum participants raised questions about the appropriateness of an initiative using AI to improve the quality of handwashing practices in an acute care hospital in India (Niyoshi Shah), which led to gaming the algorithm. Overall, participants acknowledged the dangers of techno-solutionism, in which AI researchers and developers treat AI technologies as the most obvious solutions to problems that in actuality demand much more complex strategies to address [ 24 ]. However, forum participants agreed that RECs in different contexts have differing degrees of power to raise issues of the appropriateness of an AI-based intervention.

The second overarching thematic issue related to whether and how AI-based systems transfer from one national health context to another. One central issue raised by a number of case study presentations related to the challenges of validating an algorithm with data collected in a local environment. For example, one case study presentation described a project that would involve the collection of personally identifiable data for sensitive group identities, such as tribe, clan, or religion, in the jurisdictions involved (South Africa, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and the US; Gakii Masunga). Doing so would enable the team to ensure that those groups were adequately represented in the dataset to ensure the resulting algorithm was not biased against specific community groups when deployed in that context. However, some members of these communities might desire to be represented in the dataset, whereas others might not, illustrating the need to balance autonomy and inclusivity. It was also widely recognized that collecting these data is an immense challenge, particularly when historically oppressive practices have led to a low-trust environment for international organizations and the technologies they produce. It is important to note that in some countries such as South Africa and Rwanda, it is illegal to collect information such as race and tribal identities, re-emphasizing the importance for cultural awareness and avoiding “one size fits all” solutions.

The third overarching thematic issue is related to understanding accountabilities for both the impacts of AI technologies and governance decision-making regarding their use. Where global health research involving AI leads to longer-term harms that might fall outside the usual scope of issues considered by a REC, who is to be held accountable, and how? This question was raised as one that requires much further attention, with law being mixed internationally regarding the mechanisms available to hold researchers, innovators, and their institutions accountable over the longer term. However, it was recognized in breakout group discussion that many jurisdictions are developing strong data protection regimes related specifically to international collaboration for research involving health data. For example, Kenya’s Data Protection Act requires that any internationally funded projects have a local principal investigator who will hold accountability for how data are shared and used [ 25 ]. The issue of research partnerships with commercial entities was raised by many participants in the context of accountability, pointing toward the urgent need for clear principles related to strategies for engagement with commercial technology companies in global health research.

The fourth and final overarching thematic issue raised here is that of consent. The issue of consent was framed by the widely shared recognition that models of individual, explicit consent might not produce a supportive environment for AI innovation that relies on the secondary uses of health-related datasets to build AI algorithms. Given this recognition, approaches such as community oversight of health data uses were suggested as a potential solution. However, the details of implementing such community oversight mechanisms require much further attention, particularly given the unique perspectives on health data in different country settings in global health research. Furthermore, some uses of health data do continue to require consent. One case study of South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda suggested that when health data are shared across borders, individual consent remains necessary when data is transferred from certain countries (Nezerith Cengiz). Broader clarity is necessary to support the ethical governance of health data uses for AI in global health research.

Recommendations for ethical governance of AI in global health research

Dialogue at the forum led to a range of suggestions for promoting ethical conduct of AI research for global health, related to the various roles of actors involved in the governance of AI research broadly defined. The strategies are written for actors we refer to as “governance leaders”, those people distributed throughout the AI for global health research ecosystem who are responsible for ensuring the ethical and socially responsible conduct of global health research involving AI (including researchers themselves). These include RECs, government regulators, health care leaders, health professionals, corporate social accountability officers, and others. Enacting these strategies would bolster the ethical governance of AI for global health more generally, enabling multiple actors to fulfill their roles related to governing research and development activities carried out across multiple organizations, including universities, academic health sciences centers, start-ups, and technology corporations. Specific suggestions are summarized in Table 2 .

First, forum participants suggested that governance leaders including RECs, should remain up to date on recent advances in the regulation of AI for health. Regulation of AI for health advances rapidly and takes on different forms in jurisdictions around the world. RECs play an important role in governance, but only a partial role; it was deemed important for RECs to acknowledge how they fit within a broader governance ecosystem in order to more effectively address the issues within their scope. Not only RECs but organizational leaders responsible for procurement, researchers, and commercial actors should all commit to efforts to remain up to date about the relevant approaches to regulating AI for health care and public health in jurisdictions internationally. In this way, governance can more adequately remain up to date with advances in regulation.

Second, forum participants suggested that governance leaders should focus on ethical governance of health data as a basis for ethical global health AI research. Health data are considered the foundation of AI development, being used to train AI algorithms for various uses [ 26 ]. By focusing on ethical governance of health data generation, sharing, and use, multiple actors will help to build an ethical foundation for AI development among global health researchers.

Third, forum participants believed that governance processes should incorporate AI impact assessments where appropriate. An AI impact assessment is the process of evaluating the potential effects, both positive and negative, of implementing an AI algorithm on individuals, society, and various stakeholders, generally over time frames specified in advance of implementation [ 27 ]. Although not all types of AI research in global health would warrant an AI impact assessment, this is especially relevant for those studies aiming to implement an AI system for intervention into health care or public health. Organizations such as RECs can use AI impact assessments to boost understanding of potential harms at the outset of a research project, encouraging researchers to more deeply consider potential harms in the development of their study.

Fourth, forum participants suggested that governance decisions should incorporate the use of environmental impact assessments, or at least the incorporation of environment values when assessing the potential impact of an AI system. An environmental impact assessment involves evaluating and anticipating the potential environmental effects of a proposed project to inform ethical decision-making that supports sustainability [ 28 ]. Although a relatively new consideration in research ethics conversations [ 29 ], the environmental impact of building technologies is a crucial consideration for the public health commitment to environmental sustainability. Governance leaders can use environmental impact assessments to boost understanding of potential environmental harms linked to AI research projects in global health over both the shorter and longer terms.

Fifth, forum participants suggested that governance leaders should require stronger transparency in the development of AI algorithms in global health research. Transparency was considered essential in the design and development of AI algorithms for global health to ensure ethical and accountable decision-making throughout the process. Furthermore, whether and how researchers have considered the unique contexts into which such algorithms may be deployed can be surfaced through stronger transparency, for example in describing what primary considerations were made at the outset of the project and which stakeholders were consulted along the way. Sharing information about data provenance and methods used in AI development will also enhance the trustworthiness of the AI-based research process.

Sixth, forum participants suggested that governance leaders can encourage or require community engagement at various points throughout an AI project. It was considered that engaging patients and communities is crucial in AI algorithm development to ensure that the technology aligns with community needs and values. However, participants acknowledged that this is not a straightforward process. Effective community engagement requires lengthy commitments to meeting with and hearing from diverse communities in a given setting, and demands a particular set of skills in communication and dialogue that are not possessed by all researchers. Encouraging AI researchers to begin this process early and build long-term partnerships with community members is a promising strategy to deepen community engagement in AI research for global health. One notable recommendation was that research funders have an opportunity to incentivize and enable community engagement with funds dedicated to these activities in AI research in global health.

Seventh, forum participants suggested that governance leaders can encourage researchers to build strong, fair partnerships between institutions and individuals across country settings. In a context of longstanding imbalances in geopolitical and economic power, fair partnerships in global health demand a priori commitments to share benefits related to advances in medical technologies, knowledge, and financial gains. Although enforcement of this point might be beyond the remit of RECs, commentary will encourage researchers to consider stronger, fairer partnerships in global health in the longer term.

Eighth, it became evident that it is necessary to explore new forms of regulatory experimentation given the complexity of regulating a technology of this nature. In addition, the health sector has a series of particularities that make it especially complicated to generate rules that have not been previously tested. Several participants highlighted the desire to promote spaces for experimentation such as regulatory sandboxes or innovation hubs in health. These spaces can have several benefits for addressing issues surrounding the regulation of AI in the health sector, such as: (i) increasing the capacities and knowledge of health authorities about this technology; (ii) identifying the major problems surrounding AI regulation in the health sector; (iii) establishing possibilities for exchange and learning with other authorities; (iv) promoting innovation and entrepreneurship in AI in health; and (vi) identifying the need to regulate AI in this sector and update other existing regulations.

Ninth and finally, forum participants believed that the capabilities of governance leaders need to evolve to better incorporate expertise related to AI in ways that make sense within a given jurisdiction. With respect to RECs, for example, it might not make sense for every REC to recruit a member with expertise in AI methods. Rather, it will make more sense in some jurisdictions to consult with members of the scientific community with expertise in AI when research protocols are submitted that demand such expertise. Furthermore, RECs and other approaches to research governance in jurisdictions around the world will need to evolve in order to adopt the suggestions outlined above, developing processes that apply specifically to the ethical governance of research using AI methods in global health.

Research involving the development and implementation of AI technologies continues to grow in global health, posing important challenges for ethical governance of AI in global health research around the world. In this paper we have summarized insights from the 2022 GFBR, focused specifically on issues in research ethics related to AI for global health research. We summarized four thematic challenges for governance related to AI in global health research and nine suggestions arising from presentations and dialogue at the forum. In this brief discussion section, we present an overarching observation about power imbalances that frames efforts to evolve the role of governance in global health research, and then outline two important opportunity areas as the field develops to meet the challenges of AI in global health research.

Dialogue about power is not unfamiliar in global health, especially given recent contributions exploring what it would mean to de-colonize global health research, funding, and practice [ 30 , 31 ]. Discussions of research ethics applied to AI research in global health contexts are deeply infused with power imbalances. The existing context of global health is one in which high-income countries primarily located in the “Global North” charitably invest in projects taking place primarily in the “Global South” while recouping knowledge, financial, and reputational benefits [ 32 ]. With respect to AI development in particular, recent examples of digital colonialism frame dialogue about global partnerships, raising attention to the role of large commercial entities and global financial capitalism in global health research [ 21 , 22 ]. Furthermore, the power of governance organizations such as RECs to intervene in the process of AI research in global health varies widely around the world, depending on the authorities assigned to them by domestic research governance policies. These observations frame the challenges outlined in our paper, highlighting the difficulties associated with making meaningful change in this field.

Despite these overarching challenges of the global health research context, there are clear strategies for progress in this domain. Firstly, AI innovation is rapidly evolving, which means approaches to the governance of AI for health are rapidly evolving too. Such rapid evolution presents an important opportunity for governance leaders to clarify their vision and influence over AI innovation in global health research, boosting the expertise, structure, and functionality required to meet the demands of research involving AI. Secondly, the research ethics community has strong international ties, linked to a global scholarly community that is committed to sharing insights and best practices around the world. This global community can be leveraged to coordinate efforts to produce advances in the capabilities and authorities of governance leaders to meaningfully govern AI research for global health given the challenges summarized in our paper.

Limitations

Our paper includes two specific limitations that we address explicitly here. First, it is still early in the lifetime of the development of applications of AI for use in global health, and as such, the global community has had limited opportunity to learn from experience. For example, there were many fewer case studies, which detail experiences with the actual implementation of an AI technology, submitted to GFBR 2022 for consideration than was expected. In contrast, there were many more governance reports submitted, which detail the processes and outputs of governance processes that anticipate the development and dissemination of AI technologies. This observation represents both a success and a challenge. It is a success that so many groups are engaging in anticipatory governance of AI technologies, exploring evidence of their likely impacts and governing technologies in novel and well-designed ways. It is a challenge that there is little experience to build upon of the successful implementation of AI technologies in ways that have limited harms while promoting innovation. Further experience with AI technologies in global health will contribute to revising and enhancing the challenges and recommendations we have outlined in our paper.

Second, global trends in the politics and economics of AI technologies are evolving rapidly. Although some nations are advancing detailed policy approaches to regulating AI more generally, including for uses in health care and public health, the impacts of corporate investments in AI and political responses related to governance remain to be seen. The excitement around large language models (LLMs) and large multimodal models (LMMs) has drawn deeper attention to the challenges of regulating AI in any general sense, opening dialogue about health sector-specific regulations. The direction of this global dialogue, strongly linked to high-profile corporate actors and multi-national governance institutions, will strongly influence the development of boundaries around what is possible for the ethical governance of AI for global health. We have written this paper at a point when these developments are proceeding rapidly, and as such, we acknowledge that our recommendations will need updating as the broader field evolves.

Ultimately, coordination and collaboration between many stakeholders in the research ethics ecosystem will be necessary to strengthen the ethical governance of AI in global health research. The 2022 GFBR illustrated several innovations in ethical governance of AI for global health research, as well as several areas in need of urgent attention internationally. This summary is intended to inform international and domestic efforts to strengthen research ethics and support the evolution of governance leadership to meet the demands of AI in global health research.

Data availability

All data and materials analyzed to produce this paper are available on the GFBR website: https://www.gfbr.global/past-meetings/16th-forum-cape-town-south-africa-29-30-november-2022/ .

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the outstanding contributions of the attendees of GFBR 2022 in Cape Town, South Africa. This paper is authored by members of the GFBR 2022 Planning Committee. We would like to acknowledge additional members Tamra Lysaght, National University of Singapore, and Niresh Bhagwandin, South African Medical Research Council, for their input during the planning stages and as reviewers of the applications to attend the Forum.

This work was supported by Wellcome [222525/Z/21/Z], the US National Institutes of Health, the UK Medical Research Council (part of UK Research and Innovation), and the South African Medical Research Council through funding to the Global Forum on Bioethics in Research.

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Shaw, J., Ali, J., Atuire, C.A. et al. Research ethics and artificial intelligence for global health: perspectives from the global forum on bioethics in research. BMC Med Ethics 25 , 46 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-024-01044-w

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29 April 2024

How reliable is this research? Tool flags papers discussed on PubPeer

Dalmeet Singh Chawla

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RedacTek’s tool alerts users to PubPeer discussions, and indicates when a study, or the papers that it cites, has been retracted. Credit: deepblue4you/Getty

A free online tool released earlier this month alerts researchers when a paper cites studies that are mentioned on the website PubPeer , a forum scientists often use to raise integrity concerns surrounding published papers.

Studies are usually flagged on PubPeer when readers have suspicions, for example about image manipulation , plagiarism , data fabrication or artificial intelligence (AI)-generated text . PubPeer already offers its own browser plug-in that alerts users when a study that they are reading has been posted on the site. The new tool, a plug-in released on 13 April by RedacTek , based in Oakland, California, goes further — it searches through reference lists for papers that have been flagged. The software pulls information from many sources, including PubPeer’s database; data from the digital-infrastructure organization Crossref, which assigns digital object identifiers to articles; and OpenAlex , a free index of hundreds of millions of scientific documents.

It’s important to track mentions of referenced articles on PubPeer, says Jodi Schneider, an information scientist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who has tried out the RedacTek plug-in. “Not every single reference that’s in the bibliography matters, but some of them do,” she adds. “When you see a large number of problems in somebody’s bibliography, that just calls everything into question.”

The aim of the tool is to flag potential problems with studies to researchers early on, to reduce the circulation of poor-quality science, says RedacTek founder Rick Meyler, based in Emeryville, California. Future versions might also use AI to automatically clarify whether the PubPeer comments on a paper are positive or negative, he adds.

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As well as flagging PubPeer discussions, the plug-in indicates when a study, or the papers that it cites, has been retracted. There are existing tools that alert academics about retracted citations ; some can do this during the writing process, so that researchers are aware of the publication status of studies when constructing bibliographies. But with the new tool, users can opt in to receive notifications about further ‘generations’ of retractions — alerts cover not only the study that they are reading, but also the papers it cites, articles cited by those references and even papers cited by the secondary references.

The software also calculates a ‘retraction association value’ for studies, a metric that measures the extent to which the paper is associated with science that has been withdrawn from the literature. As well as informing individual researchers, the plug-in could help scholarly publishers to keep tabs on their own journals, Meyler says, because it allows users to filter by publication.

In its ‘paper scorecard’, the tool also flags any papers in the three generations of referenced studies in which more than 25% of papers in the bibliography are self-citations — references by authors to their previous works.

Future versions could highlight whether papers cited retracted studies before or after the retraction was issued, notes Meyler, or whether mentions of such studies acknowledge the retraction. That would be useful, says Schneider, who co-authored a 2020 analysis that found that as little as 4% of citations to retracted studies note that the referenced paper has been retracted 1 .

Meyler says that RedacTek is currently in talks with scholarly-services firm Cabell’s International in Beaumont, Texas, which maintains pay-to-view lists of suspected predatory journals , which publish articles without proper quality checks for issues such as plagiarism but still collect authors’ fees. The plan is to use these lists to improve the tool so that it can also automatically flag any cited papers that are published in such journals.

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On a First-Order Bi-Sorted Semantically Closed Language

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Fernanda Birolli Abrahão ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1966-8791 1 &
Edelcio Gonçalves de Souza 1

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This paper is about the concept of semantically closed languages. Roughly speaking, those are languages which can name their own sentences and apply to them semantic predicates, such as the truth or satisfaction predicates. Hence, they are “self-referential languages,” in the sense that they are capable of producing sentences about themselves or other sentences in the same language. In section one, we introduce the concept informally; in section two, we provide the formal definition of first-order semantically closed languages, which is the Tarskian definition with some technical modifications. Then, we construct a semantic for this kind of language, and prove that the language is indeed semantically closed (according to Definition 1). Finally, we discuss whether the logic underlying the construction is classical, and future goals of this research.

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Deciding Atomicity of Subword-Closed Languages

Towards a Relational Treating of Language and Logical Systems

On the Minimal Non-Fregean Grzegorczyk Logic

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Abrahão, F.B., de Souza, E.G. On a First-Order Bi-Sorted Semantically Closed Language. Stud Logica (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11225-024-10104-6

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

A short-term longitudinal study on the development of moral disengagement among schoolchildren: the role of collective moral disengagement, authoritative teaching, and student-teacher relationship quality.

1 Department of Primary Teacher Education, Kristianstad University, Kristianstad, Sweden
2 Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
3 Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

The aim of this study was to examine whether collective moral disengagement and authoritative teaching at the classroom level, and student-teacher relationship quality at the individual level, predicted individual moral disengagement among pre-adolescent students 1 year later. In this short-term longitudinal study, 1,373 students from 108 classrooms answered a web-based questionnaire on tablets during school, once in fifth grade (T1) and once in sixth grade (T2). The results showed, after controlling for T1 moral disengagement, gender, and immigrant background, that students with better student-teacher relationship quality at T1 were more inclined to score lower on moral disengagement at T2, whereas students in classrooms with higher levels of collective moral disengagement at T1 were more inclined to score higher on moral disengagement at T2. In addition, both collective moral disengagement and authoritative teaching were found to moderate the associations between student-teacher relationship quality at T1 and moral disengagement at T2. These findings underscore the importance of fostering positive relationships between students and teachers, as well as minimizing collective moral disengagement in classrooms. These measures may prevent the potential escalation of moral disengagement in a negative direction.

Introduction

Although there exist different theories and research traditions of children’s moral development, most of them focus on how children progress in and increase their morality ( Jensen, 2020 ; Killen and Smetana, 2022 ). However, as Bussey (2020) notes, there is a lack of research regarding children’s adherence to moral standards, including the moral standards–behavior gap. For instance, already by age three, children typically recognize moral transgressions, such as being mean to others, independently of authority figures and rules (for a meta-analysis, see Yoo and Smetana, 2022 ), yet schoolchildren still engage in immoral actions, such as bullying. Considering the pervasive moral socialization of children taking place at home and in school, and despite their own progress and advancement in moral development, including the understanding by the time they are of preschool age that bullying is wrong, why do schoolchildren engage in such immoral behavior?

Bandura’s social cognitive theory provides insights into this possible moral standard–behavior gap, highlighting the role of moral disengagement in justifying immoral behaviors ( Bandura, 1999 , 2002 , 2016 ). Moral disengagement is a social cognitive process allowing individuals to justify harmful behaviors towards others, enabling them to act immorally without experiencing typical moral self-sanctions like remorse, guilt, or shame ( Bandura, 2002 , 2016 ). Previous research has established a clear link between moral disengagement and bullying ( Killer et al., 2019 ; Thornberg, 2023 ), a pervasive issue affecting children and adolescents worldwide in school settings ( Bradshaw et al., 2017 ; Cosma et al., 2020 ). Consequently, the development of moral disengagement emerges as a critical concern in the field of child development and education. Recognizing the pivotal role of moral development within educational contexts and the significant influence of school environments on students’ behavior ( Eccles and Roeser, 2015 ), longitudinal research on predictors of moral disengagement within a school context is needed. However, existing longitudinal studies often treat moral disengagement as a predictor rather than investigating its antecedents ( Thornberg, 2023 ). To address this gap, the aim of our study is to examine whether students’ moral disengagement in peer aggression is predicted by students’ perceptions of student-teacher relationships, the degree of authoritative teaching and collective moral disengagement within the classroom over the course of 1 year.

In Sweden, compulsory schooling comprises four stages: a pre-school class (age 6), lower elementary school (grades 1–3, ages 7–9), upper elementary school (grades 4–6, ages 10–12), and lower secondary school (grades 7–9, ages 13–15). In elementary school, students typically remain in a single classroom (homeroom) with the same classmates for most subjects, where one or two primary class teachers teach the majority of subjects, with only a few additional teachers (e.g., physical education, arts). Additionally, it is common for class teachers to stay with the same group of students from first to third grade (lower elementary teachers) and then from fourth to sixth grade (upper elementary teachers). Thus, the classroom, defined as the social setting in which students and teachers interact and influence each other’s attitudes and behaviors ( Farmer et al., 2011 ; Hendricks et al., 2016 ), emerges as an important unit of analysis when examining factors influencing the development of moral disengagement in Swedish children.

In the current study, we focus on early adolescence and the last 2 years of the Swedish elementary school, from age 11 to age 12. Focusing on this age group is particularly important because bullying seems to be most prevalent during these years, both in Sweden ( Friends, 2022 ) and elsewhere ( Due et al., 2005 ). Furthermore, studying moral disengagement development at the beginning of adolescence is crucial because it’s a phase where individuals start to actively shape their sense of identity and values ( Sawyer et al., 2012 ). This period offers a vital window for investigating the foundational aspects, precursors, and implications of morality, given its role in shaping lifelong ethical attitudes and behaviors ( Malti et al., 2021 ). Further, our focus on the role of teachers and peers in the present study aligns with Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) conceptualization of the microsystem , and thus aims to explore how specific factors—on their own and in interaction—within a student’s immediate and direct environment influence the development of moral disengagement. Relationships with teachers and peers play a significant role in shaping a students’ development, influencing their beliefs, behaviors, psychological health, and social relationships ( Hamre and Pianta, 2001 ; Cornelius-White, 2007 ; Farmer et al., 2019 ; Troop-Gordon et al., 2019 ).

Moral disengagement theory

Within the framework of moral disengagement theory, Bandura (2016) described eight mechanisms through which moral disengagement occurs: through moral justification, using euphemistic language to soften destructive actions, comparing one’s actions favorably to others’, avoiding personal responsibility by shifting blame elsewhere, diffusing responsibility within a group, distorting or minimizing the consequences of one’s actions, dehumanizing others to justify mistreatment, and attributing blame to victims. By selectively using these moral disengagement mechanisms, individuals can avoid negative self-sanction, thereby increasing the likelihood of engaging in harmful behaviors.

A fundamental principle in the social cognitive theory is viewing humans as active agents who can intentionally influence their functioning and life circumstances ( Bandura, 1986 ). Moral agency – the ability to refrain from immoral actions and act humanely - results from the interactions among personal factors (e.g., cognition, emotions), social and environmental factors (e.g., family, peer group reactions), and behaviors (e.g., aggression). In other words, behavior and cognition - such as moral disengagement - are partly the result of socialization processes within different socio-cultural contexts ( Bandura, 1999 ). Indeed, previous research has shown that poor parental supervision and monitoring ( Campaert et al., 2018 ), rejecting parenting, and neighborhood impoverishment ( Hyde et al., 2010 ) positively predict moral disengagement over time. Regarding the peer context, Fontaine et al. (2014) revealed that peer rejection predicted subsequent moral disengagement, while Caravita et al. (2014) found that in early adolescence (but not in late childhood), Italian students became more like their friends in terms of level of moral disengagement over time. In a recent study, Korean elementary school students were also found to become more like their friends concerning moral disengagement over time ( Kim et al., 2024 ).

Collective moral disengagement

Social cognitive theory does not only include personal agency but also collective agency as a central part of the self-regulatory process ( Bandura, 2002 ). Therefore, moral disengagement can also be considered a group characteristic ( White et al., 2009 ; Bandura, 2016 ). Specifically, collective moral disengagement is “an emergent group-level property arising from the interactive, coordinative, and synergistic group dynamics” ( White et al., 2009 , p. 43). In schools, collective moral disengagement may emerge at the school or classroom level, whereas it may operate more broadly in other contexts (e.g., the community; Bussey, 2020 ). At the classroom level, it captures the shared beliefs of students about the extent to which moral disengagement mechanisms are common among classmates ( Gini et al., 2014b ). Previous research from Sweden ( Thornberg et al., 2021 ; Bjärehed, 2022 ) and other European countries ( Gini et al., 2014b ; Kollerová et al., 2018 ) has demonstrated that students in classrooms characterized by higher levels of collective moral disengagement are more likely to engage in peer aggression and bullying. With the particular interest of the current study, a meta-analytical review ( Luo and Bussey, 2023 ) identified collective moral disengagement as one of the environmental correlates of moral disengagement, suggesting a positive association between the two constructs. In other words, in classrooms with higher levels of collective moral disengagement, students are also more prone to enlist moral disengagement mechanisms ( Gini et al., 2022 ).

Furthermore, collective moral disengagement has been found to moderate the association between individual moral disengagement and aggressive behaviors. For instance, in one Swedish study, Sjögren et al. (2021a) found that students more often reinforced or assisted in bullying situations if they belonged to classrooms with higher levels of collective moral disengagement and, at the same time, scored higher on individual moral disengagement. This aligns with the social cognitive theory, which suggests that collective processes interact with and influence individual behavior. Whether or not collective moral disengagement influences the development of individual students’ tendency to moral disengagement is still not well known. To the best of our knowledge, the present study is the first to examine whether or not collective moral disengagement at the classroom level predicts students’ moral disengagement over time.

Authoritative teaching

The concept of authoritative parenting was introduced by Baumrind (1966) , in her influential work on parenting styles, and has been negatively linked with moral disengagement in young adults ( Di Pentima et al., 2023 ). Although this theory primarily addresses parents and child-rearing, scholars have highlighted the parallels between parents and teachers in their shared objective of fostering positive development and learning in their children and students ( Wentzel, 2002 ; Walker, 2009 ; Ertesvåg, 2011 ). Teachers play a significant role in shaping the growth of young individuals and can serve as influential socialization agents in their students’ personal and social development ( Farmer et al., 2011 , 2019 ). Authoritative teaching refers to high levels of support (responsiveness) and structure (demandingness). While support includes warmth, care, responsiveness, and open communication, structure is about high expectations, demandingness, and strict but fair enforcement of school rules and classroom order ( Walker, 2009 ; Gregory et al., 2010 ; Thornberg et al., 2018 ). Finne et al. (2018) have argued that an authoritative teaching style can counteract a destructive classroom power structure and foster moral engagement among students. Accordingly, authoritative schools and teaching have been linked to greater academic achievement in the United States ( Dever and Karabenick, 2011 ) and less bullying and victimization among Swedish children ( Thornberg et al., 2018 ; Kloo et al., 2023 ), Chinese adolescents ( Wang et al., 2022 ), and American adolescents ( Gregory et al., 2010 ; Cornell et al., 2015 ; Lau et al., 2018 ). However, less is known about the role of authoritative teaching for the development of students’ moral disengagement. Thus, the current study is the first to investigate whether authoritative teaching at the classroom level predicts students’ moral disengagement over time.

Student-teacher relationship quality

A warm, caring, and supportive student-teacher relationship is a vital part of authoritative teaching. However, the quality of the relationship between an individual student and the teacher does not necessarily align with the overall teaching style at the classroom level. Previous research has shown that a higher quality relationship between a student and teacher (warmer, more caring and supportive, more respectful interaction patterns) is associated with less bullying and peer victimization (for a meta-analysis, see ten Bokkel et al., 2023 ). Although it is our understanding that no studies have examined the predictive role of student-teacher relationship quality on student’s moral disengagement within a longitudinal design, a few cross-sectional studies on bullying and peer victimization have included both moral disengagement and student-teacher relationship quality (or aspects of the latter). For instance, one Swedish study showed that students demonstrating higher moral disengagement in conjunction with poorer student-teacher relationship quality were more prone to reinforce in bullying situations ( Sjögren et al., 2021b ). Another study on ethnic bullying in Italy showed that closeness to teachers might restrain morally disengaged children from bullying ( Iannello et al., 2021 ).

Furthermore, moral disengagement has been tested as a mediator between different school factors (e.g., school climate, teachers’ responses to bullying, student–student relationships) and bullying and aggression (e.g., Campaert et al., 2017 ; Ivaniushina and Alexandrov, 2022 ; Gao et al., 2023 ), suggesting that school factors may influence students’ moral disengagement. Concerning student-teacher relationships, one recent cross-sectional study examined whether moral disengagement mediated the association between student-teacher relationship quality and classroom incivility ( Gao et al., 2024 ). Classroom incivility here refers to student behaviors that negatively impact the learning environment, encompassing everything from minor disturbances to physical violence. The findings from this study showed that students with poorer student-teacher relationship quality scored also higher in moral disengagement, which in turn was linked to more classroom incivility behaviors. The authors suggest that a warm, caring, and supportive teacher may model positive communication patterns and behaviors, possibly helping students to “respect and understand others, strengthen their moral and rule constraints, and thereby reduce their levels of moral disengagement” ( Gao et al., 2024 , p. 508). Nevertheless, the cross-sectional design did not allow conclusions about the directionalities of these associations. The present study is the first to examine whether student-teacher relationship quality at the individual level predicts students’ moral disengagement over time.

The present study

The present study aimed to examine whether collective moral disengagement and authoritative teaching at the classroom level and student-teacher relationship quality at the individual level predicted individual moral disengagement among pre-adolescent students 1 year later. Given that previous studies suggest there are gender differences in moral disengagement ( Caravita et al., 2012 ; Thornberg et al., 2023 ; Gao et al., 2024 ), and considering that a student’s tendency to morally disengage may vary due to differing socialization practices across cultures ( Bussey, 2020 ), we included gender and immigrant background as control variables, along with the initial level of moral disengagement. Because Bandura (2016) argues that moral disengagement is “manifested differently depending on the sphere of activity” (p. 26), we delimited classroom collective moral disengagement and students’ moral disengagement in this study to the activity of peer aggression, including bullying and other forms of mean, unwanted or harmful behaviors toward peers. Thus, we did not study students’ proneness to morally disengage in general but how inclined they were to morally disengage when considering peer aggression.

Drawing on social cognitive theory, which posits that behaviors and cognitions are, in part, the result of socialization processes within different socio-cultural contexts ( Bandura, 1999 ), and empirical evidence from cross-sectional studies that collective moral disengagement at the classroom level is negatively associated with defending behavior ( Gini et al., 2015 ; Kollerová et al., 2018 ), and positively linked with peer aggression ( Gini et al., 2015 ), bullying perpetration ( Kollerová et al., 2018 ; Bjärehed et al., 2021 ; Thornberg et al., 2021 ), siding with peer aggressors ( Sjögren et al., 2021a ), and individual moral disengagement ( Luo and Bussey, 2023 ), we hypothesized that greater collective moral disengagement at the classroom level would predict greater individual moral disengagement 1 year later ( Hypothesis 1 ).

Based on previous cross-sectional findings showing that authoritative parenting is negatively linked with moral disengagement ( Di Pentima et al., 2023 ), that higher school structure (a dimension of an authoritative school construct) is associated with less moral disengagement ( Ivaniushina and Alexandrov, 2022 ), that authoritative teaching is negatively linked with bullying and pro-bullying behaviors ( Lau et al., 2018 ; Thornberg et al., 2018 ; Kloo et al., 2023 ), and that individually perceived authoritative school climate is negatively linked with moral disengagement ( Teng et al., 2020 ), we hypothesized that greater authoritative teaching at the classroom level would predict less moral disengagement 1 year later ( Hypothesis 2 ).

With reference to research showing that greater student-teacher relationship quality decreases the risk of bullying perpetration ( ten Bokkel et al., 2023 ) and cross-sectional studies showing a negative correlation between student-teacher relationship quality and moral disengagement ( Sjögren et al., 2021b ; Gao et al., 2024 ), we hypothesized that greater student-teacher relationship quality at the student level would predict less moral disengagement 1 year later ( Hypothesis 3 ).

Given that social cognitive theory ( Bandura, 1986 ) emphasizes the interplay between personal, behavioral, and environmental factors, and that previous research has not yet studied whether collective moral disengagement or authoritative teaching at the classroom level interacts with student-teacher relationship quality at the individual level to predict moral disengagement, we examined potential cross-level interaction effects in an exploratory manner.

Participants and procedure

Data were collected within a four-year longitudinal project that examined individual and classroom social and moral correlates of school bullying among Swedish school children from upper elementary school to the second year of lower secondary school. The overarching project started in the academic year 2015/2016. A total of 2,448 fifth-grade students in 64 schools were invited to participate in the current study. We used a strategic selection methodology which meant that the sample included students from different socio-geographical areas in Sweden (e.g., rural areas, small towns, and cities). Out of the original sample, 1,623 students filled in the questionnaire in grade 5 (51% girls). Reasons for non-participation included failure to submit parental consent (785 students) or absence on the day of data collection (40 students).

The students answered a web-based questionnaire on tablets in their regular classroom setting on two occasions: the first time in grade 5 and the second 1 year later in grade 6. Of those who answered the questionnaire in both grade 5 and grade 6, the final sample consisted of data from 1,373 students (grade 5, M = 11.5 and SD = 0.3), nested in 108 classrooms. For attrition analyses, we assessed whether students who continued their participation ( n = 1,373) from fifth to sixth grade differed from those who only participated in fifth grade ( n = 250) in terms of their levels of individual moral disengagement, student-teacher relationship quality, and perceptions of authoritative teaching and collective moral disengagement in their classroom in fifth grade. Independent t tests showed that there were no group differences in any of these variables in fifth grade. Written informed parental consent and student assent were obtained from all participants, and no incentives were provided for participation. During each session, either a member of the research team or a teacher was present to explain the study procedures and aid participants as needed. This assistance included providing reading support and clarifying specific items or words on the questionnaire. Participants were also informed of their right to withdraw from the study at any time, with assurance that their individual responses would remain inaccessible to both parents and school personnel. Additionally, participants were instructed to sit at a distance from one another to prevent viewing each other’s responses. On average, participants took approximately 30 min to complete the questionnaire.

Moral disengagement

Moral disengagement at the individual level was measured with an 18-item self-report scale in grade 5 (T1) and grade 6 (T2). This scale was specifically developed in Swedish for the overarching longitudinal project to capture moral disengagement in peer aggression. Previous scales have commonly addressed either moral disengagement in more general antisocial behavior ( Bandura et al., 1996 ), or specifically in bullying situations ( Hymel et al., 2005 ; Thornberg and Jungert, 2014 ). The scale used in the current study has previously demonstrated adequate psychometric properties among Swedish school children ( Thornberg et al., 2019 ; Bjärehed et al., 2021 ; Sjögren et al., 2021a ; Bjärehed, 2022 ).

The students were asked to rate the extent to which they agreed (1 = Strongly disagree to 7 = Strongly agree ) with each of the 18 items (e.g., “If you cannot be like everybody else, it is your fault if you get bullied or frozen out.” or “If my friends begin to tease a classmate, I cannot be blamed for being with them and teasing that person too.”) The scale captured all eight moral disengagement mechanisms described by Bandura (2016) . CFAs with the MLM estimator displayed adequate fit: (grade 5: χ 2 (135) = 392.018, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.90, RMSEA = 0.067; 90% CI [0.059, 0.074], SRMR = 0.055; grade 6: χ 2 (135) = 405.179, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.91, RMSEA = 0.063; 90% CI [0.056, 0.070], SRMR = 0.046). For the current sample, Cronbach’s α was 0.87 in the fifth and 0.89 in the sixth grades. Therefore, the mean score of all items was computed as an index for moral disengagement. This measured the students’ overall tendency to morally disengage in peer aggression situations.

Student–teacher relationship quality

Student-teacher relationship quality (STRQ) was measured in grade 5 (T1) with a 13-item self-report scale, specifically developed in Swedish for the overarching project. The scale has demonstrated adequate psychometric properties among Swedish school children ( Forsberg et al., 2023 ). The students were asked to rate the extent to which they agreed (1 = Strongly disagree to 7 = Strongly agree ) with each of the 13 items. Seven items were positively worded to capture positive student–teacher relationship qualities, and six were negatively worded to capture negative student–teacher relationship qualities (as perceived by the student). Some example items are: “My teachers really care about me” (positive STRQ) and “My teachers do not like me” (negative STRQ). The negatively worded items were reversed and the mean score of all thirteen items was computed as an index variable. Thus, higher values on the index variable represent a positive relationship. CFA with the MLM estimator (two factors and accounting for the nested structure) displayed adequate fit: χ 2 (64) = 364.825, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.95, RMSEA = 0.083; 90% CI [0.074, 0.091], SRMR = 0.048. Cronbach’s α for the whole scale (with reversed items) was 0.94.

Collective moral disengagement (CMD) was measured in grade 5 (T1) with an 18-item self-report scale, specifically developed in Swedish for the overarching project, that has demonstrated adequate psychometric properties among Swedish school children ( Alsaadi et al., 2018 ; Bjärehed et al., 2021 ; Sjögren et al., 2021a ; Bjärehed, 2022 ). The scale consisted of the same items as those measuring individual moral disengagement. However, to capture the collective dimension, this scale used the same procedure as in Gini et al.’s (2014b) classroom CMD scale and asked: “In your class, how many students think that…?” which the students then answered by selecting one of the following response categories: “None,” “About one quarter,” “About half,” “About three quarters,” and “Everyone.” At the individual level, the scale represented the individual’s perception of the degree to which moral disengagement was shared among peers in their classroom (referred to as student-perceived collective moral disengagement ; Gini et al., 2014a ). CFA with the MLM estimator (accounting for the nested structure) displayed adequate fit: χ 2 (135) = 558.574, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.91, RMSEA = 0.070; 90% CI [0.064, 0.077], SRMR = 0.043. Cronbach’s α for the current sample was 0.92. Collective moral disengagement as a classroom-level construct was obtained by calculating the average score of all classroom members’ mean scores.

To measure authoritative teaching in grade 5 (T1), we used two subscales from the 15-item Authoritative Classroom Climate Scale ( Thornberg et al., 2018 ). This scale was specifically developed in Swedish for the overarching project and has demonstrated adequate psychometric properties among Swedish school children ( Thornberg et al., 2018 ). The scale consists of two subscales of authoritative teaching: teacher support (4 items, e.g., “our teachers really care about the students,” “our teachers really give the students good help and support”) and teacher structure (4 items, e.g., “our teachers bring order and undisturbed working atmosphere in the classroom,” “our teachers make clear demands on students”). The students were asked to rate the extent to which they agreed (1 = Strongly disagree to 7 = Strongly agree ) with the eight statements. CFA with the MLM estimator (two factors and accounting for the nested structure) displayed adequate fit: χ 2 (19) = 68.751, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.97, RMSEA = 0.044; 90% CI [0.036, 0.052], SRMR = 0.021. Cronbach’s α for the current sample was 0.91. As with the scale measuring collective moral disengagement, we calculated each student’s mean and then averaged the scores for each classroom.

Control variables

Gender and immigrant background were included as control variables at the individual level. The students were asked whether they identified as a girl or a boy (girl = 0, boy = 1). For immigrant background, defined as not being born in Sweden or having two foreign-born parents, the students were asked whether they and their parents were born in Sweden. From these answers, a dummy variable was created indicating whether the students had a Swedish or immigrant background (0 = Swedish background, 1 = Immigrant background).

The students ( N = 1,373) were nested within classrooms ( M = 108). Thus, multilevel modeling techniques were used to analyze the data. This allowed us to disentangle individual-level and classroom-level effects on grade 6 moral disengagement (MD6). The individual-level variables were student-teacher relationship quality (STRQ5), immigrant background, gender, and moral disengagement (MD5), all reported in grade 5. The classroom-level variables examined were authoritative teaching (AUTH5) and collective moral disengagement (CMD5), also reported in grade 5.

First, we estimated an unconditional model with a random intercept. In this model, we estimated the overall classroom-level variance in moral disengagement (MD6). To test whether greater student-teacher relationship quality (STRQ5) predicted greater moral disengagement (MD6) 1 year later ( Hypothesis 3 ), we added the individual-level variables as fixed effects (Model 1). Thus, this model examined the influence of student-teacher relationship quality in grade 5 on grade 6 moral disengagement while controlling for grade 5 moral disengagement, gender, and immigrant background.

To test whether greater authoritative teaching ( Hypothesis 2 ) and less collective moral disengagement ( Hypothesis 1 ) at the classroom level would predict less moral disengagement 1 year later, the two grade 5 classroom variables (AUTH5 and CMD5) were added as fixed effects. That is, in model 2, we examined the contribution of authoritative teaching and collective moral disengagement on grade 6 moral disengagement, over and above the individual’s student-teacher relationship quality (STRQ5), and the control variables. Lastly, in Model 3, we added the four cross-level interaction effects between moral disengagement, student-teacher relationship quality, authoritative teaching, and collective moral disengagement (MD5 × AUTH5, STRQ5 × AUTH5, IMD5 × CMD5, and STRQ5 × CMD5). This final model examined whether the effects of the individual-level variables differed depending on different classroom levels of authoritative teaching and collective moral disengagement.

We examined model fit improvement for each new model to assess the added variables’ explanatory value to the overall model. To help interpretation, the individual-level variables (except immigrant background and gender) were grand-mean centered, whereas the classroom-level variables were centered around the mean of all classrooms. All multilevel regression analyses were conducted in RStudio (version 2023.06.2) with the package lme4 and the restricted maximum likelihood estimator (REML). All models were refitted with the maximum likelihood estimator (ML) to examine model improvement.

Descriptive statistics and correlations

Descriptive statistics and correlations of the individual-level and classroom-level variables are presented in Tables 1 , 2 . Moral disengagement in grade 5 was positively correlated with grade 6 moral disengagement ( r = 0.54, p < 0.001). In contrast, student-teacher relationship quality in grade 5 was negatively correlated with moral disengagement in grade 5 ( r = −0.42, p < 0.001) and grade 6 ( r = −0.38, p < 0.001). In other words, students with better student-teacher relationship quality in the fifth grade were more likely to score lower on moral disengagement in both grade 5 and grade 6. At the classroom level, collective moral disengagement in grade 5 was positively associated with the class mean of moral disengagement in grade 6 ( r = 0.61, p < 0.001), whereas authoritative teaching in grade 5 was negatively associated with the class mean of moral disengagement in grade 6 ( r = −0.50, p < 0.001). Thus, classrooms with greater authoritative teaching and classrooms with less collective moral disengagement were more likely to have a lower class mean of moral disengagement than other classrooms 1 year later. In addition, there was a negative correlation at the classroom level between authoritative teaching and collective moral disengagement in grade 5 ( r = −0.71, p < 0.001), which means that collective moral disengagement tended to be lower in classrooms where teachers displayed greater authoritative teaching.

Table 1 . Correlations, means, and standard deviations for individual-level variables.

Table 2 . Correlations, means, and standard deviations for classroom-level variables.

Multilevel regression analyses

Calculations of the intraclass coefficient (ICC) revealed variation at the classroom level, accounting for about 9% of the total variance in moral disengagement in the sixth grade. Therefore, the use of multilevel modeling was justified. As described earlier, Model 1 examined the influence of student-teacher relationship quality in grade 5 on grade 6 moral disengagement while controlling for grade 5 moral disengagement, gender, and immigrant background ( Hypothesis 3 ). In Model 2, Hypotheses 1 and 2 were examined. In the third model, interaction effects were added and examined in an exploratory manner. Reported coefficients, as presented in Table 3 and in the text, are unstandardized and thus indicate the expected change in moral disengagement for each unit of change in the independent variable. The results of the multilevel modeling are summarized in Table 3 .

Table 3 . Multilevel estimates for models predicting student moral disengagement in grade 6.

At the individual level, our results revealed that girls ( b = 0.109, SE = 0.03, p < 0.001) and students who reported less moral disengagement ( b = 0.373, SE = 0.03, p < 0.001) and greater student-teacher relationship quality in grade 5 ( b = −0.096, SE = 0.02, p < 0.001) were inclined to score lower on moral disengagement in grade 6 (see Table 3 , Model 3). In other words, we found support for our third hypothesis, as the quality of student-teacher relationship at the individual level negatively predicted students’ moral disengagement 1 year later, even when controlling for their moral disengagement in grade 5 and other variables in the model.

Additionally, we found support for our first hypothesis, as classroom levels of collective moral disengagement in grade 5 positively predicted individual students’ moral disengagement in grade 6 ( b = 0.285, SE = 0.09, p < 0.01). Thus, students in classrooms characterized by higher levels of collective moral disengagement were more likely to score higher on moral disengagement 1 year later compared to students in classrooms with lower levels of collective moral disengagement in grade 5. Contrary to Hypothesis 2 , authoritative teaching in grade 5 did not significantly predict moral disengagement in grade 6. However, interaction effects were found for three of the four interactions tested (see Figures 1 – 3 ).

Figure 1 . Cross-level interaction between moral disengagement and authoritative teaching predicting moral disengagement in grade 6.

Figure 2 . Cross-level interaction between student-teacher relationship quality and authoritative teaching predicting moral disengagement in grade 6.

Figure 3 . Cross-level interaction between student-teacher relationship quality and collective moral disengagement predicting moral disengagement in grade 6.

First, there was a significant interaction between students’ moral disengagement and authoritative teaching in grade 5 ( b = −0.26, SE = 0.05, p < 0.001). To interpret these significant interaction effects, we computed simple slopes (see Preacher et al., 2006 ) for low (–1SD) and high (+1SD) levels of authoritative teaching. As shown in Figure 1 , the effect of moral disengagement in grade 5 on moral disengagement in grade 6 was stronger in classrooms characterized by low authoritative teaching ( b low = 0.53, p < 0.001) compared with classrooms characterized as high in authoritative teaching ( b high = 0.21, p < 0.001). Second, and as shown in Figure 2 , we found a significant interaction between student-teacher relationship quality and authoritative teaching in grade 5 ( b = −0.13, SE = 0.03, p < 0.001). Simple slope analysis for low (−1SD) and high classroom levels (+1SD) of authoritative teaching showed that in classrooms with high authoritative teaching, better student-teacher relationship quality was associated with less moral disengagement in the sixth grade ( b high = −0.17, p < 0.001), whereas in classrooms with low levels of authoritative teaching, grade 6 moral disengagement did not vary as a function of student-teacher relationship quality ( b low = −0.02, p = 0 .31). Lastly, and as illustrated in Figure 3 , there was a significant interaction between student-teacher relationship quality and collective moral disengagement in grade 5 ( b = −0.340, SE = 0.09, p < 0.001). The simple slope for low (–1SD) collective moral disengagement was not significant ( b low = −0.02, p = 0 .42), whereas the simple slope for high (+1SD) collective moral disengagement was negative and significant ( b high = −0.17, p < 0.001). That is, in classrooms with high levels of collective moral disengagement, better student-teacher relationship quality was associated with lower levels of moral disengagement 1 year later.

With reference to social cognitive theory ( Bandura, 2016 ), children can develop their moral standards, self-regulatory processes, and behaviors but can also learn to use moral disengagement mechanisms from socialization agents such as teachers and peers in school. Understanding the antecedents of moral disengagement is crucial, given its well-established link to school bullying ( Killer et al., 2019 ; Luo and Bussey, 2023 ; Thornberg, 2023 ) and peer aggression more generally ( Gini et al., 2014a ; Luo and Bussey, 2023 ). In alignment with social cognitive theory and reciprocal determinism ( Bandura, 2016 ), this study offers insights into the complex interplay between personal factors, including cognitions, and social factors, that are transmitted through the influence of peers and teachers. It examines the impact of specific school microsystem factors ( Bronfenbrenner, 1979 ) on the development of moral disengagement in pre-adolescence, specifically focusing on collective moral disengagement, authoritative teaching, and the quality of student-teacher relationships. To our knowledge, the present study has been the first to examine how these factors, uniquely and interactively, predict moral disengagement within a longitudinal design.

As hypothesized, our study revealed that students in classrooms with higher levels of collective moral disengagement in fifth grade were more prone to endorse morally disengaged beliefs about peer aggression 1 year later ( Hypothesis 1 ). Thus, collective moral disengagement is a contextual factor that affects not only behaviors such as bullying ( Gini et al., 2014b ; Kollerová et al., 2018 ; Thornberg et al., 2021 ; Bjärehed, 2022 ) but also socio-cognitive processes, such as an individual’s moral disengagement. This underscores the significant influence of the peer group on the development of moral disengagement among pre-adolescents. Our finding adds to previous research by suggesting that not only do friends tend to become more similar in moral disengagement levels over time in early adolescence ( Caravita et al., 2014 ; Kim et al., 2024 ), but pre-adolescents who belong to a classroom with higher levels of collective moral disengagement are at an increased risk of developing greater individual moral disengagement.

While students’ moral disengagement is in itself a risk factor for peer aggression and bullying ( Gini et al., 2014a ; Luo and Bussey, 2023 ), and a predictor of later bullying perpetration (for a review see Thornberg, 2023 ), collective moral disengagement at the classroom level has also been shown to be associated with bullying behaviors, over and above individual moral disengagement ( Bjärehed et al., 2021 ; Sjögren et al., 2021a ). In addition to this existing research, and a recent longitudinal study showing that classroom collective moral disengagement explains between-classroom variability in later aggression ( Gini et al., 2022 ), the current findings contribute to the literature by demonstrating that classroom collective moral disengagement also predicts students’ moral disengagement over time. In other words, collective moral disengagement at the classroom level can be linked to a negative development of students’ moral cognition and behavior.

Although authoritative teaching was negatively associated with classroom levels of moral disengagement 1 year later in the bivariate analysis, there was no significant direct effect of authoritative teaching in fifth grade on moral disengagement in the sixth grade in the final model ( Hypothesis 2 ). One study has found that students perceiving school rules as transparent and fair are less likely to activate mechanisms of moral disengagement, resulting in decreased engagement in negative behaviors ( Ivaniushina and Alexandrov, 2022 ). The inconsistency with our findings may be explained by the focus of our study on students’ collective perceptions of their teacher’s teaching style rather than individual students’ perceptions. Ivaniushina and Alexandrov’s study also included a slightly older sample (ages 12–15). Further, they focused on structure as a school characteristic, while our measure included both structure and support and specifically examined the teacher and classroom setting. It is also plausible that support and structure are differentially associated with moral disengagement. In a Swedish study with grade 4 students, Kloo et al. (2023) distinguished between these two dimensions of authoritative teaching; their results suggest that teacher support drives the negative association between authoritative teaching and bullying perpetration. For example, high teacher structure might impact bullying through reduced moral disengagement, as proposed by Ivaniushina and Alexandrov (2022) , while a classroom characterized by support (i.e., warmth, open communication, and caring) might be directly linked to lower levels of bullying and victimization ( Lau et al., 2018 ; Thornberg et al., 2018 ; Kloo et al., 2023 ). In addition to the impact of collective moral disengagement at the classroom level found in the present study, another reasonable explanation could be that students’ perception of their relationship quality with the teacher ( Gao et al., 2024 ) is a more influential factor for their development and changes in moral disengagement over time than the overall teaching style at the classroom level. This suggestion is supported by the finding in our study that more positive, warm, and supportive student-teacher relationships predicted lower levels of moral disengagement.

The current results suggest that a higher quality of student-teacher relationships may protect against subsequent increases in moral disengagement ( Hypothesis 3 ). This indicates that how teachers establish and maintain relationships with their students, and how this relationship quality varies across their student cohort, may play an essential role in their students’ development of moral disengagement. This finding holds significance, particularly in light of the well-established connection between moral disengagement and later involvement in school bullying, as identified in other studies ( Thornberg, 2023 ). In our study, students with more negative, less supportive, and less caring student-teacher relationships were more likely to exhibit elevated levels of moral disengagement in the sixth grade, regardless of their initial level of moral disengagement. This result expands upon previous cross-sectional findings demonstrating a positive link between student-teacher relationships and moral disengagement ( Gao et al., 2024 ) that also incorporate two time points within a longitudinal design.

In Gao et al.’s study, the association between student-teacher relationships and moral disengagement was stronger in early adolescence (11–14 years) compared to middle adolescence (15–17 years). From a developmental standpoint, adolescents progressively gain independence, thus suggesting that the influence of adults, including teachers, on their socialization might diminish later in adolescence. Consistent with this notion, prior longitudinal studies have indicated that moral disengagement is influenced by factors in home environments until late childhood ( Hyde et al., 2010 ), after which it becomes more influenced by peers ( Caravita et al., 2014 ). Our study adds to this literature by suggesting that teachers are influential socialization agents impacting students’ tendency to morally disengage in pre-adolescence. Not only can higher student-teacher relationship quality be associated with less bullying ( ten Bokkel et al., 2023 ) and peer aggression ( Krause and Smith, 2023 ). According to our study it can also be associated with less moral disengagement. The literature, in turn, has linked low moral disengagement with less bullying ( Killer et al., 2019 ; Thornberg, 2023 ) and peer aggression ( Gini et al., 2014a ; Luo and Bussey, 2023 ). Altogether, this could be interpreted in terms of what Bandura (2016) calls triadic codetermination, which means that “human functioning is a product of the interplay of personal influences, the behavior individuals engage in, and the environmental forces that impinge on them” (p. 6). Personal influences would here be moral disengagement, behavior would refer to bullying or peer aggression, and environmental forces the student-teacher relationship quality. Our study contributes to the literature by showing that student-teacher relationship quality negatively predicted moral disengagement 1 year later. Since our study focused on changes between the ages of 11 and 12, it would be desirable to include a more extended period in future studies, both with younger school children and those in later adolescence. This could provide insights into the potentially changing influence of student-teacher relationship quality on moral disengagement across different developmental stages.

Cross-level interaction effects

In our study, three out of four tested cross-level interactions significantly predicted moral disengagement 1 year later: the interaction between moral disengagement and authoritative teaching, the interaction between student-teacher relationship quality and authoritative teaching, and the interaction between student-teacher relationship quality and collective moral disengagement.

Although we did not find that authoritative teaching at the classroom level predicted subsequent moral disengagement (when controlling for collective moral disengagement at the classroom level and student-teacher relationship quality, gender, immigrant background, and previous moral disengagement at the individual level), authoritative teaching was found to moderate the effects of moral disengagement and student-teacher relationship quality in grade 5 on subsequent moral disengagement. In classrooms with less authoritative teaching, the impact of moral disengagement on subsequent moral disengagement was more pronounced. This finding suggests that an authoritative teaching style can act as a buffer against a negative spiral of escalating moral disengagement over time, especially for students who already exhibit high levels of moral disengagement in grade 5.

Our findings further indicate that lower student-teacher relationship quality in grade 5 is associated with higher moral disengagement in grade 6. However, this association was only significant in classrooms with high levels of authoritative teaching. In other words, this result suggests that having poor student-teacher relationships when belonging to classrooms where teachers are high in authoritative teaching is a risk factor of moral disengagement. With reference to the self-categorization theory ( Turner and Oakes, 1989 ; Abrams and Hogg, 1990 ), a possible explanation for our findings might be that the few students who had poor relationships with their teachers compared themselves with the majority of their classmates who had more positive relationships with their teachers due to the authoritative teaching style (teachers showed greater warmth, care, support, and responsiveness to students in general). It is plausible to assume that these everyday social comparisons in school increase the risk of developing a sense of non-belonging in the classroom context together with a more deviant social identity. As a part of their self-categorization process ( Turner and Oakes, 1989 ), students with poor teacher relationships would be prone to develop a self-serving bias of favoring the social category they identify themselves with (e.g., anti-school, antisocial, or rejected in-group) while devaluating the majority group of others in the classroom and other peers whom they perceive belong to the same well-adjusted outgroup. These “upward comparisons” ( Laninga-Wijnen et al., 2023 ) might, in this case, contribute to an antisocial trajectory and a greater need for moral disengagement to maintain positive self-esteem and avoid self-sanctions.

In the final regression model, collective moral disengagement at the classroom level and the quality of the student-teacher relationship at the individual level were uniquely linked to moral disengagement in sixth grade. Nevertheless, the extent to which student-teacher relationship quality predicted moral disengagement also depended on the levels of classroom collective moral disengagement. Previous studies have demonstrated that collective moral disengagement can act as a protective group property within the classroom, reducing the risk of bullying perpetration ( Gini et al., 2014b ; Kollerová et al., 2018 ; Thornberg et al., 2019 ; Thornberg et al., 2021 ; Bjärehed, 2022 ). Our study contributes to this body of literature by suggesting that students with high student-teacher relationship quality score low on subsequent moral disengagement independently of classroom levels of collective moral disengagement. In contrast, students with low student-teacher relationship quality tend to score higher on subsequent moral disengagement in classrooms with high levels of collective moral disengagement compared to students in classrooms with low collective moral disengagement. Thus, having a positive student-teacher relationship appears to be an important protective factor against moral disengagement. The interaction effect in our results suggest that students who had positive, warm, and supportive relationships with their teachers were also better equipped to resist the bad influence of classroom collective moral disengagement on their moral development. One year later they still showed low levels of moral disengagement despite belonging to a classroom with high collective moral disengagement.

Limitations

The current study fills an important gap in the literature by examining the role played by specific school microsystem factors ( Bronfenbrenner, 1979 ) on the development of moral disengagement in pre-adolescence. Nevertheless, some methodological limitations need to be addressed. First, all the studied variables were assessed using self-report measures. Self-reports are vulnerable to social desirability biases, and there may be a risk that students underreport their moral disengagement while exaggerating how common it is among classmates. Nevertheless, as both moral disengagement and collective moral disengagement relate to students’ perceptions and beliefs, self-reports may be the best way to capture these constructs. Further, some controversy exists about whether students should rate their teachers’ behaviors ( den Brok et al., 2006 ), like authoritative teaching. Thus, future studies could examine whether the current findings hold when teacher reports and/or direct observations are used to capture authoritative teaching.

Although our study implemented a longitudinal design, only two time points over a relatively short period of 1 year were included. A more extensive longitudinal approach with additional time points could be employed to enhance the robustness of our findings. This would provide a more comprehensive understanding of the observed associations and enable us to capture potential developmental trends or variations over an extended period. In addition, changes in moral disengagement may also be influenced by several factors not included in the current study.

Furthermore, no classroom mean score of authoritative teaching was below 3.9 (max 7); for collective moral disengagement, no classroom score exceeded 2.6 (max 5). This suggests that our study compared classrooms characterized as relatively authoritative and with relatively low levels of collective moral disengagement. Consequently, caution is advised when generalizing findings to classrooms characterized by a lower degree of authoritative teaching and higher levels of collective moral disengagement. Finally, our study exclusively involved students in Swedish schools. Future studies should investigate the transferability of these findings to other countries and cultural contexts.

Practical implications

The current findings have implications for teacher educators and school personnel. First, fostering a positive and supportive relationship between students and teachers seems crucial in minimizing a negative developmental spiral of moral disengagement in pre-adolescence. Teacher educators should, therefore, focus on equipping pre-service teachers with the skills and knowledge to build positive and supportive relationships with their students ( Bouchard and Smith, 2017 ). Teachers who engage in authoritative teaching as a part of their bullying prevention strategy (see Lau et al., 2018 ; Thornberg et al., 2018 ; Kloo et al., 2023 ) need to make the effort to build warm, caring, and responsive relationships with all of the students in their classroom and include targeted actions for students they fail to reach and with whom they fail to develop supportive relationships. To prevent an adverse moral climate, pre-service teachers and teachers can also benefit from professional training on influencing group dynamics ( Hymel et al., 2015 ). This training should include strategies that proactively prevent collective moral disengagement from emerging in the first place and promote a moral climate defined by active engagement and social responsibility. In line with the democratic mission ( Swedish Education Act, SFS 2010:800, 2010 ), teachers could integrate discussions about ethics and moral decision-making into their ordinary lessons by making students aware of moral disengagement mechanisms and how these can contribute to explaining a range of negative, inhumane and aggressive behaviors, including bullying and peer aggression, delinquency/criminality, political oppression, terrorism, genocide, and war ( Bandura, 2016 ). When students are encouraged to reflect on ethical considerations and to identify moral disengagement mechanisms, they might be more likely to develop a moral compass and resist moral disengagement.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

Ethics statement

The studies involving humans were approved by Regional Ethical Review Board at Linköping. The studies were conducted in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent for participation in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardians/next of kin.

Author contributions

MB: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. BS: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. RT: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. GG: Writing – review & editing. TP: Writing – review & editing.

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This research was supported by a grant awarded to RT from the Swedish Research Council (grant number D0775301).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Keywords: moral disengagement, collective moral disengagement, authoritative teaching, student-teacher relationship quality, bullying, peer aggression

Citation: Bjärehed M, Sjögren B, Thornberg R, Gini G and Pozzoli T (2024) A short-term longitudinal study on the development of moral disengagement among schoolchildren: the role of collective moral disengagement, authoritative teaching, and student-teacher relationship quality. Front. Psychol . 15:1381015. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1381015

Received: 02 February 2024; Accepted: 09 April 2024; Published: 01 May 2024.

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Copyright © 2024 Bjärehed, Sjögren, Thornberg, Gini and Pozzoli. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Marlene Bjärehed, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Title: from chatgpt, dall-e 3 to sora: how has generative ai changed digital humanities research and services.

Abstract: Generative large-scale language models create the fifth paradigm of scientific research, organically combine data science and computational intelligence, transform the research paradigm of natural language processing and multimodal information processing, promote the new trend of AI-enabled social science research, and provide new ideas for digital humanities research and application. This article profoundly explores the application of large-scale language models in digital humanities research, revealing their significant potential in ancient book protection, intelligent processing, and academic innovation. The article first outlines the importance of ancient book resources and the necessity of digital preservation, followed by a detailed introduction to developing large-scale language models, such as ChatGPT, and their applications in document management, content understanding, and cross-cultural research. Through specific cases, the article demonstrates how AI can assist in the organization, classification, and content generation of ancient books. Then, it explores the prospects of AI applications in artistic innovation and cultural heritage preservation. Finally, the article explores the challenges and opportunities in the interaction of technology, information, and society in the digital humanities triggered by AI technologies.

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Research Paper vs. Research Article: What's the Difference?
Research paper: Research article: A research paper is an extended form of writing that presents and supports an argument on a particular topic. It provides evidence for the opinion or idea in the form of facts, data, analysis, opinions from authorities in specific fields etc. The objective is to make original claims based on careful evaluation ...
Difference between Paper and Article for scientific writings
A research article is a paper or writing that informs people of a path breaking research or a finding with clinical data to support the finding. Research Paper. Research is an activity that is given much importance in academics, and this is why assignments requiring research and technical writing start early in the school.
Difference between Research Paper and Research Article
Research Paper VS Research Article. There is a pattern to allude to academic papers and term papers composed by understudies in schools as a research paper. The articles presented by researchers and scholars with their noteworthy examination are known as research articles. Research papers composed by the students mostly not take in journals.
Q: Are 'journal article' and 'research article' the same?
Any article that is published in a journal can be referred to as a "journal article." However, journals publish different types of articles, some of which require original research, while others do not. A "research article" however, refers to only those article types that require original research. Typically, empirical studies or original ...
What's the difference between a research article (or research study
A research paper is a primary source...that is, it reports the methods and results of an original study performed by the authors. The kind of study may vary (it could have been an experiment, survey, interview, etc.), but in all cases, raw data have been collected and analyzed by the authors, and conclusions drawn from the results of that analysis. ...
Journal Article vs Research Paper: Difference and Comparison
A journal article is a shorter scholarly writing published in a specific academic journal. A research paper is a more extended, comprehensive academic writing presenting original research. Journal articles are more focused and present specific findings, while research papers are broader and present a more comprehensive study.
Difference Between Research Paper and Journal Article
While both forms utilize the same techniques, a research paper gets done under the evaluation of a teacher or instructor. Another small difference is the extent of the references used. Most often in a journal article, a reader can expect to find an extensive bibliography, whereas a research paper won't warrant as extensive of a reference list.
How to Write a Research Paper
A research paper is a piece of academic writing that provides analysis, interpretation, and argument based on in-depth independent research. Research papers are similar to academic essays , but they are usually longer and more detailed assignments, designed to assess not only your writing skills but also your skills in scholarly research.
How do research papers differ from research articles?
A research paper, probably is more specific, presenting the work of some particular author (s) on a particular project. Thus a research paper, presents an advancement in a field, whereas an article can be more general, not tied to a specific project, but generalizing a bit to give context to other work and bring it together.
Difference Between Research Article and Research Paper
4- A research article examines a potential or existing concept and discusses its effects. A thesis may be provided in a research paper, although it will not be as detailed. 5- Both differs in terms of formatting and length. A Longer in length whereas research article might be 15 pages long, but it's not always the case.
Types of journal articles
Original Research: This is the most common type of journal manuscript used to publish full reports of data from research. It may be called an Original Article, Research Article, Research, or just Article, depending on the journal. The Original Research format is suitable for many different fields and different types of studies.
What is the difference between Research Paper, Research Article, Review
Research articles and Research papers both are same ,know with different name. Research papers contain original idea, proposed model, primary study while review paper narrate other researches ...
Research Guides: Articles, Books, and . . . ? Understanding the Many
Unlike scholarly journals, magazines are written for a mainstream audience and are not peer-reviewed.A handful of academic journals (like Science and Nature) blur the line between these two categories; they publish peer-reviewed articles, but combine them with news, opinions, and full-color photos in a magazine-style presentation.. Trade journals are targeted toward a specific profession or ...
Difference Between Journal Article and Research Paper
Having said that, one thing that needs to be made clear is that the length of it is contingent on the setting of the study. However, a research paper can be anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 words long, whereas a journal can only be between 5,000 and 10,000 words long at most. This is the primary distinction between the two types of writing.
Difference between research paper and scientific paper
6. A research paper is a paper containing original research. That is, if you do some work to add (or try to add) new knowledge to a field of study, and then present the details of your approach and findings in a paper, that paper can be called a research paper. Not all academic papers contain original research; other kinds of academic papers ...
Difference Between Research Paper and Research Article
The research articles and research papers are the pieces of the writing which need inquiry, critical analysis, insight, and exhibition of few particular skills from the scientists and students. It is actually overwhelming for the students when the teacher asks them about writing a research paper as an assignment. Students get confused amid ...
What's The Difference Between An Article, A Paper, And An Essay?
Paper is often used as a synonym for an essay. A research paper is usually an essay that requires a lot of research, relates to some very scholarly topic and should have a very formalized and clear structure. In academic circles - in 'real science', we mean - a paper is a key document that presents findings and results of the work of ...
Yale professor accuses Columbia prez Shafik of plagiarism
Mobarak, an economics and management professor at Yale, told The Post the findings and research cited in both papers are pretty much equal. "It got rewritten, but fundamentally it's the same ...
When Patients Do Their Own Research
We, the authors of this article, come at this from both angles—one of us is a doctor, and one of us is an expert in statistics who has made a career of helping millions of pregnant people sort ...
Same age, same experience, less pay. But it's not for the reasons you
New research shows there is a pay gap between men and women working in the same occupations. Credit: Louie Douvis Research manager at e61 Silvia Griselda said Australians regularly heard the pay ...
Research ethics and artificial intelligence for global health
The ethical governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in health care and public health continues to be an urgent issue for attention in policy, research, and practice. In this paper we report on central themes related to challenges and strategies for promoting ethics in research involving AI in global health, arising from the Global Forum on Bioethics in Research (GFBR), held in Cape Town ...
How reliable is this research? Tool flags papers discussed on PubPeer
Related Articles. More than 10,000 research papers were retracted in 2023 — a new record US project seeks standard way to communicate research retractions Predatory publishers' latest scam ...
On a First-Order Bi-Sorted Semantically Closed Language
This paper is about the concept of semantically closed languages. Roughly speaking, those are languages which can name their own sentences and apply to them semantic predicates, such as the truth or satisfaction predicates. Hence, they are "self-referential languages," in the sense that they are capable of producing sentences about themselves or other sentences in the same language. In ...
Frontiers
Introduction. Although there exist different theories and research traditions of children's moral development, most of them focus on how children progress in and increase their morality (Jensen, 2020; Killen and Smetana, 2022).However, as Bussey (2020) notes, there is a lack of research regarding children's adherence to moral standards, including the moral standards-behavior gap.
Full article: Call for papers: special issue of Journal of Critical
Submission of full papers to Journal of Critical Realism will open on 1 December 2023 and close on 31 May 2024. All papers will be subject to peer review. Feedback period will be June-July 2024. Final decisions will be communicated to authors by 31 August 2024. Final papers are required by 19 November 2024.
[2404.18518] From ChatGPT, DALL-E 3 to Sora: How has Generative AI
Generative large-scale language models create the fifth paradigm of scientific research, organically combine data science and computational intelligence, transform the research paradigm of natural language processing and multimodal information processing, promote the new trend of AI-enabled social science research, and provide new ideas for digital humanities research and application. This ...

Research Paper vs. Research Article: What’s the Difference?

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Q. What's the difference between a research article (or research study) and a review article?

Answered By: Priscilla Coulter Last Updated: Jul 29, 2022 Views: 231616

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DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RESEARCH PAPER AND JOURNAL ARTICLE

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