Perception of What the Ethical Climate is and What it Should be: The Role of Gender, Academic Status, and Ethical Education

Methodology
This section discusses the research methodology
utilized in the study. Issues pertaining to research
design, sample size, development of measuring
instruments, and the quality of measuring instru-
ments will be addressed. It should be noted that
the present study was part of a larger project,
consisting of a series of surveys undertaken to
investigate the influence of factors such as gender,
age, academic status, and ethical education on
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various aspects of ethical attitudes of business
students. The current paper focuses on a survey
in which subjects responded to 20 items tapping
ethical attitudes in two different ways on a 5-
point Likert scale anchored on each side by
STRONGLY AGREE and STRONGLY
DISAGREE. The items measured student per-
ceptions on two factors; namely, what the current
ethical climate is (HOWITIS) as well as what the
ideal ethical climate should be (SHOULDBE).
Development of instruments
A series of 20 statements relating to ethical issues
and behavior in society were prepared using the
ethical literature as a guide. The subjects were
asked to respond to each statement in terms of
“Is it this way” and “Should it be this way” on
a 5-point Likert scale. An initial draft of the state-
ments was circulated to about 20 professors of
business, ethics, and philosophy to test for face
and content validity of the instrument. Based on
the comments and suggestions received, the
questionnaire was refined. The questionnaire was
then used in a pilot study to survey readers of
Design News (Gautschi, 1992), a magazine for
practicing engineers and engineering managers.
Based on the results of the preliminary survey
(n = 202), it was concluded that the question-
naire was easy to understand, had face validity,
and could be used to assess ethical attitudes on
the two dimensions of interest. The statements
used in the present study to assess the relevant
constructs are given in Table I.
Project design
This study used a nonexperimental design or
what some would call a quasi-experimental
design (for a debate on the terminology among
methodologists, see the discussion in Pedhazur
and Schemlkin, 1991, p. 278). Kerlinger (1986)
has described nonexperimental research as
“Empirical enquiry in which the scientist does
not have direct control of independent variables
because their manifestations have already
occurred or because they are inherently not
manipulable” (p. 348). All the independent
variables in this study, namely the sex of the
subject (male or female), the academic classifi-
Perception of Ethical Climate
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TABLE I
Items comprising the two dependent variables