Investigating researcher perceptions of Questionable Research Practices

In quantitative applied linguistics research, the ethical grey zone between responsible conduct of research and blatant misconduct covers numerous researcher practices that may be more or less ethical depending on situational variables (e.g., context, researcher intent). Known as questionable research practices (QRPs), these actions coincide with the day-to-day decision points that occur throughout the research process. Building on Larsson et al.’s (2023) investigation of the prevalence and severity of 58 field-specific QRPs among researchers in the quantitative humanities, the current study presents a thematic analysis of the 2,261 qualitative comments left by 167 of these survey respondents. Five overarching themes were identified in these comments: Roughly half of the responses were justifications of QRP actions, while others highlighted the contextually-dependent nature of QRPs and pointed to potential ambiguity in the wording of these items. These findings offer implications for how we as a field discuss QRPs, as well as researcher training practices.