Developing and evaluating an educational intervention on conflicts of interest and corporate influence on science

Financial conflicts of interest resulting from corporate funding of research can bias the evidence base. We designed an educational intervention that sought to enable participants to make informed decisions and mitigate risk when considering corporate funding for research. We used pre/post-test surveys, which comprised a mix of closed and open-ended questions, to evaluate the training and its impact on knowledge (Wilcoxon signed-rank test), attitudes and perceptions (Friedman’s test with planned post hoc tests). Open-ended questions were coded and key themes identified. Twenty participants from the University of Bath (15 PhD students and 5 research staff) completed the pre-test survey and attended the training, 17 filled in the post-test survey, and 17 filled in the 3-month follow-up survey. All participants agreed or strongly agreed that the issues relating to conflict of interest presented in the training increased their interest in the topic. Participants’ knowledge significantly increased between the pre and post-measures. Awareness of institutional conflict of interest policies and participants’ confidence in mitigating the risks of corporate funding also significantly improved. For the other measures of impact, either there was not a statistically significant difference between the pre, post, and follow-up measures or there was, but post hoc tests were not significant after a Bonferroni correction. Our findings indicate that even a short educational intervention could increase researchers’ confidence in and ability to make informed decisions about whether to accept corporate funding and under what conditions.