Key to any work involving research integrity is the concept of empowerment. This is particularly important for the INTEGRITY project where we seek to “empower (future) researchers instead of floating them in a corner of misconduct” (van den Hoven & Krom 2020). Thus, an agreed understanding and definition, as well as conceptual clarity, around the meaning of empowerment is vital. Such clarity is required in order to allow us to develop tools which seek to empower, to recognise empowerment when we see it and also for evaluation of our work.

Empowerment has been discussed at length in many bodies of literature over the past decades. These discussions often fail to reach consensus as to the meaning of the term and frequently conclude without a clear conceptualization. This may be because empowerment is an openended construct that is not easily reduced to a universal set of operational rules and definitions (Zimmerman 1995). Furthermore, it has been claimed that it is difficult to define empowerment in action as it takes on different forms in different people and contexts (Rappoport 1984). Despite this, there are a variety of broad definitions including by Zimmerman (2000) who describes empowerment as perceived efficacy and control over the social, economic, and political aspects of one’s life, and Page (1999) who defines empowerment as a multi-dimensional social process that helps people both gain control over their own lives and challenge assumptions about the way things are and can be.

Whilst these definitions of empowerment are useful, the prevailing lack of consensus and conceptualization needs to be overcome and additional clarity is required if interventions designed to empower are to be effective and measurable. More worryingly, such lack of clarity may result in the notion of empowerment being used as a ‘sticker’ to indicate some vague outcome (Pandey 2020) which may not even be measurable. In order for us in INTEGRITY to have a more meaningful discussion on empowerment, as well as develop the tools designed to actually empower people, there is a need to disentangle the concept and clarify its linkages to research integrity. There is also a need for a more refined understanding of the term and additional certainty on the indicators of empowerment in this context.

But how do we achieve this? According to Page (1999) in order to demystify empowerment we need to understand it more broadly and allow discussion across different disciplinary and practice lines. If we are to follow this advice we should engage more closely with the current debates and conversations ongoing in other bodies of academic literature. A recent paper by Pandey (2020) may be a good place to begin our engagement. She suggests that a more refined understanding of empowerment is required in order to unpack its meaning so that it can be used more effectively as a conceptual and evaluative framework when implementing and using technology in the Global South. Pandey’s work frames empowerment as a battle between the concept of empowerment itself and the actual empowerment outcome attained through technology by reviewing the links between empowerment and the actual development impacts of technology in various development contexts. She concludes that empowerment in a development context needs to; 1) be more specific about what type of empowerment takes place; 2) take into account both agency level changes and socio-institutional structures; and, 3) consider the dual effect of both empowerment and disempowerment.

From this she proposes 6 categories of empowerment drawing on Alsop & Heinson’s (2005) formulation of empowerment indicators and Zimmerman’s (1991, 2001) conceptualization of empowerment theory. These categories are:

1. Community empowerment – expanding the assets and capabilities of poorer people to participate in, negotiate with, influence, control and hold accountable the institutions that effect their lives.

2. Psychological empowerment – enhancement of capabilities, agency and well-being at an individual level.

3. Gender empowerment – provision of equal rights, voice, freedom of expression, space for political and social change and greater independence/agency to act on opportunities and choices for both men and women.

4. Cultural empowerment – juxtapose narratives, languages and diverse cultural identities as part of a broader social and educational change that wishes to undermine the hierarchical social divisions and classifications created by the modernist mentality. This includes freedom of expression of different cultural identities, narratives, traditions and languages and social and political acceptance of different cultural identities, rituals, and traditions.

5. Economic empowerment – ensure the increase, availability and widening of the distribution of basic life-sustaining goods such as food, shelter, health and protection, and highlights the range of choices available to individuals and nations by freeing them from servitude and dependence.

6. Political and structural empowerment – this is concerned with civil society mobilization in which citizens voices are amplified; a mechanism for vertical accountability is created for holding institutions and service providers accountable for their actions.

This categorization is highly relevant to our work and bound to help us better understand the relationship between the tools we are developing for INTEGRITY and empowerment. It will also help ensure that our notion of empowerment is more closely aligned with the actual outcomes of the INTEGRITY project over the coming years. In addition, this work may act as a catalyst for advancement of our ongoing discourse on empowerment in research integrity in general and its relation to the INTEGRITY project in particular. This is not to say that Pandey’s 6 categories of empowerment are all relevant to the field of research integrity – they are clearly not – but this work does give us a useful starting point and an initial categorization that we can reconfigure and extend to suit the specific requirements of the INTEGRITY project. One example of relevance concerns the computer science discipline where culture and tradition allows social and political acceptance of the use and reuse of code written by others without considering this to be plagiarism. This would seem to fit with Pandey’s categorization of cultural empowerment which accommodates differences in cultural identity, rituals and traditions including the working practices, norms and traditions of different groups.

Unfortunately this blog entry does not allow space for deeper consideration of extending Pandey’s categorization of empowerment or discussion of any of the other ongoing debates in the various bodies of literature. This does not mean we should conclude our discussion here. On the contrary, deeper engagement with this work on empowerment from various academic disciplines is to be strongly encouraged. Such deeper engagement should focus on bodies of work where ethics, emancipation, freedom, technology, agency and culture are core to the discipline. If we in the INTEGRITY project can engage more closely with this work and these communities we are bound to reach consensus on the meaning of empowerment, a clearer conceptualization of the term, and a more effective means of measuring empowerment in our work.