Research

A thoroughly conducted scientific or scholarly research finds answers to hypotheses or propositions and produces outcomes that have a direct and indirect impact on individuals, institutions, communities and the world at large. When the researchers conducted a study on sound and transparent, reliable, and valid protocols, the results may stand the test of time.

To pass the validity and reliability test, a researcher must learn to think critically and avoid the pitfalls in human reasoning. The human capacity to reason is quintessential to scientific research, and when that capacity is blurred and overwhelmed by biases, conflict of interests, conflict of conscience, emotions, illogical thoughts, the outcomes of a research can be vulnerable and susceptible to egregious errors; they take, for instance, correlation for causation, make generalizations about members of a category after having encountered only a restricted subset of that category, look for evidence that supports a hypothesis without also looking for evidence that would disconfirm such hypothesis and confuse what must logically be true with what seems to be right in the world.

Moreover, accurate and correct statistical report about PM phenomena is no longer determined only by the significance of a test or survey if the p-value is equal to or less than alpha 0.05. Studies show that p-value of 0.5 alone is not adequate to reject the null hypothesis. An accurate determination of rejecting the null hypothesis must include the effect size and the confident or certain intervals (Cumming, 2012; Verdam et al., 2013; Trafimow & Rice, 2011).

Culpibality of PM Fields of Study

Parallelly, the project management fields of study are fraught with misconstrued and misinformed notions. Some practitioners, scholars, and writers, to name a few examples, equate project management to a unique conceptualization or contextualization. This belief is rampant and widely held among IT project management enthusiasts.  For them, what occurs in the IT industry reflects on the entire project management industry, and that the success or failure of the PM fields is largely measured by the failure or success of information technology projects.

There also those whose who focus on methodology as the quintessential solution or panacea to the continuing failure of project management practitioners to deliver projects, particularly complex size projects, without considering inaccurate project cost estimate, schedule delays, budgetary constraints, environmental disasters, and resistance. This misinformation or misconstruction also exacerbate the fragmentation and superficial conduct of qualitative and quantitative research inquiries regarding project management activities.

Critical Mission of PMSURI

The Project Management University Research Institute intends to fill the knowledge gap between misinformation and fragmented research results with those that meet internal and external validity outcomes by applying the hybrid of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies in its research endeavors. 

Internal validity is measured in terms of design and data accuracy and how causal, linear, and correlational relationships can be drawn from such data. External validity is measured in terms of its generalizability and repeatability. In other words, other researchers across disciplines will be able to replicate PMSURI researched results or discoveries.

Eligibility

To conduct collective and individual research at PMSURI, every research agent, faculty member, postgraduate, postdoctoral scholar, undergraduate student, and consultant must meet the following eligibility criteria:

1. Complete the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) meet the Institutional Review Board (IRB) approbation within six weeks of initiating their research. CITI training certificate will be valid for three years. CITI researchers are required every two years.
2. Complete the following CITI training modules:
3. Research Misconduct
4. Inter-Based Research
5. Belmont Report
6. History of Ethical Principles
7. Defining Research with Human Subjects
8. Assessing Risks
9. United Federal Regulations
10. Informed Consent
11. Privacy and Confidentiality
12. Conflicts of Interest in Research Involving Human Subjects
13. Comply with all applicable PMSURF policies and procedures, including but not limited to policies on intellectual property, conflict of interest and human subject protection
14. Ensure that their proprietary data is not inadvertently disclosed
15. Protect participant privacy and confidential information

Ethics

Bias, or the appearance thereof, can be extremely detrimental to research integrity. It can erode the public trust in the research enterprise if not addressed in a transparent manner. The institute will abide by the following ethics:

Set up a watchdog management team to protect the rights of not only research subjects, but public trust, safety, and welfare and reduce or minimize bias in every aspect of the research from the design, data collection, analysis and reporting.

Avoid a conflict of conscience, which comes about when a person has personal convictions that may jeopardize their objectivity in the research. 
Promote objectivity in research by ensuring that research is free from bias due to individual researchers’ conflict of interest including the following factors: 
The term “significant financial interest” means anything of monetary value, including, but not limited to, salary or other payments for services (e.g., consulting fees or honoraria); equity interest (e.g., stocks, stock options or other ownership interests); and intellectual property rights (e.g., patents, copyrights and royalties from such rights).