BEYOND COMPLIANCE: DEVELOPING AND APPLYING A SITUATIONAL QUESTIONNAIRE ON RESEARCH ETHICS IN EUROPEAN PUBLIC RESEARCH ORGANISATIONS

Abstract

This paper explores the development and use of a situational questionnaire designed to understand how ethical principles are comprehended, interpreted, and acted upon within European public research organisations. Moving beyond compliance-focused and regulatory views of research ethics, the questionnaire captures both personal and organisational perspectives on ethically sensitive situations, including principles such as reliability, honesty, respect, and accountability. Building on previous methodological work, the tool was utilised within the Joint Research Centre’s TTO Circle [1, 2] network to investigate how researchers and organisations perceive the need for ethical assessment across various scenarios. The findings highlight significant gaps between individual attitudes and institutional practices and reveal a tendency to prioritise well-established or formally regulated ethical areas over everyday research situations. The study demonstrates the usefulness of situational analysis in identifying tensions between autonomy and governance and underscores opportunities to strengthen ethics frameworks in research organisations through clearer, more transparent, and more context-aware approaches.