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Ethics Position Questionnaire

I developed the Ethics Position Questionnaire to measure individualdifferences in moral thought, prompted in part by curiosity about the

diverse reactions to one of my favorite social psychological studies: Milgram’s (1963) classic studiesof obedience to authority. Milgram (1964), in defending his work, noted the wide range of opinionson the morality of his methods. Some critics were openly hostile, condemning him for deceivingpeople and putting them in such a stressful situation, but others argued that his findings morethan justified the temporary discomfort that his subjects experienced. To examine this variation,Barry Schlenker and I (Schlenker & Forsyth, 1977) asked people who had never before heard ofMilgram’s studies to indicate their degree of agreement with 50 items drawn from variousphilosophical analyses of ethics. The items ran the gamut from ones concerned with the feasibilityof universal ethical codes to ones concerned with deception to those pertaining to harm to researchparticipants. We identified two robust dimensions when we factor analyzed these data. Items withsubstantial loadings on the idealism-pragmatism factor pertained to concern for consequences (e.g.,“The ethicality of a study depends on the amount of psychological harm that could potentially occurto participants”). Items that loaded on the rule-universality (relativism) factor pertained to moralprinciples (e.g., “It is possible to develop rigid codes of ethics that can be applied without exceptionto all psychological research”). (For full citations and papers, please visit my profile page.).

I reworded the items so that they applied to any behavioral domain, rather than just psychologicalexperimentation, and added new items to more broadly sample the idealism and rule-universalismdomains. After item analysis and a second revision the Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ) included20 items, 10 for each of the idealism and relativism scales.

If you are interested in completing the EPQ, and learning what your idealism and relativism scoresare, please visit this Survey page.

Using the Items in Research

If you are interested in using the EPQ in research, in most cases respondents indicate degree ofagreement with each item using a scale that ranges from disagreement (1) to agreement (9).Idealism scores are calculated by summing responses from items 1 to 10. Relativism scores are

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calculated by summing responses from items 11 to 20. The original response scale used was a 9-point scale, although people often trim it back to a true Likert 5-point scale.

Analyzing the Results

Because this is a research scale, there are no “norms” available to interpret the meaning of thescores. However, if you want to compare your findings to a baserate, then it would be best to usethe mean and median based on the studies reviewed by Forsyth, O’Boyle, & McDaniel in their 2008paper. That way, you can say things like “80% of the respondents in my study scored below themedian on idealism”. But, if all you want to talk about is differences among your respondents, thenI would use the median from the population you studied. That way, you can say things like “Amongthe respondents in this study, those who were low in idealism were most likely to act immorally.”The analyses tend to be easier if you use the median of your own data because it makes the cellsizes more equivalent if you do any type of median split analysis (there are equal numbers ofpeople who are high Is and low Is and high rs and low rs).

If you decide to use the normed median, then that median should be based on the version of theEPQ you used. People use varying numbers of items from the original EPQ, and they also changethe response scale. The original scale had 10 items for each subscale, and the scale ranged from 1to 9 for each item. Therefore, people could score from 10 to 90 on these scales, originally. Themean and median, assuming a 9-point response scale (so that scores could range from 10 to 90),based on a review of 139 samples drawn from 29 different countries, for a total sample of 30,230respondents, are shown in the table below.

Scale Mean Median

Idealism 65.52 66.06

Relativism 52.74 54.54

If you used fewer items (sometimes, based on scaling work, people drop out a few of the lowestcontributing items, but analysis does indicate that the fewer items used to assess idealism, thelower the idealism scores) and a different response scale (such as 1-5), your medians and meanswould not be comparable to those in the table. To recalculate the rescaled means and medians foryour metric use the following formulae:(Highest score possible) * .734 = Median for Idealism(Highest score possible) * .606 = Median for Relativism

Most individuals conduct simple bivariate correlational analyses or regression analysis to test theirhypotheses. These types of analyses permit them to draw such conclusions as “Individuals whowere more idealistic were less likely to do X” or “Increases in relativism were associated with morepositive attitudes toward Y.” In some cases, too, individuals conduct one sample t-tests todetermine if their sample is significantly different from the means reported in the table above.

It should be noted, however, that the original theory maintained that the two dimensions of theEPQ interact with each other to predict judgment and behavior (see “ethics positions” for moreinformation). So, even though most researchers do not conduct such tests (In a recent meta-

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information). So, even though most researchers do not conduct such tests (In a recent meta-analysis of research involving the EPQ we wanted to see if the prediction that idealism interactedwith relativism to predict moral judgments held up, but so few researchers actually tested for theinteraction that we had to give up on that goal.) some type of test of their interaction should beconsidered.

First, you could can carry out a median split of the two dimensions, and then test their interaction.That does mean that some people who are right at the cut-off are arbitrarily placed in the onecategory rather than another.

Second, you could choose “extreme scorers,” by dropping people who are not only at the medianbut also those who are close to the median. As you do that, you gradually lose power because yourn drops, but the hope is you gain power as well by creating more differentiation among yoursubjects. There no rules, though, about how far you should move away from the median…perhaps,a quarter standard deviation on either side of the median would do it, but that will cost you asmuch as 30% of your subjects (and not to mention that you might end up dropping a person whois close to the median on idealism, for example, but has a very extreme score on relativism). If youdo continue with the median splits approach, the best analysis is a 2 X 2 (high-low relativism Xhigh-low idealism) and not a 1 X 4 (absolutism, subjectivism, situationism, exceptionism).

Third, probably the most statistically powerful, if complicated, approach, is to conduct a moderatedmultiple regression analysis. Leave the idealism and relativism scores as continuous variables, anduse them to compute an interaction score (just multiply them together). In the first regressionstep enter the two main effect variables (idealism and relativism). In the second step, enter theinteraction. If the interaction is significant, then you need to conduct additional tests to determinethe shape of the interaction (see this page for additional information).

The Items: The instructions and items for the EPQ

The Ethics Position Questionnaire

Please indicate if you agree or disagree with the following items. Eachrepresents a commonly held opinion and there are no right or wronganswers. We are interested in your reaction to such matters ofopinion.Rate your reaction to each statement by writing a number to theleft of each statement where:1 = Completely disagree2 = Largely disagree3 = Moderately disagree4 = Slightly disagree5 = Neither agree nor disagree6 = Slightly agree7 = Moderately agree8 = Largely agree9 = Completely agree

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1. People should make certain that their actions neverintentionally harm another even to a small degree.

2. Risks to another should never be tolerated, irrespectiveof how small the risks might be.

3. The existence of potential harm to others is alwayswrong, irrespective of the benefits to be gained.

4. One should never psychologically or physically harmanother person.

5. One should not perform an action which might in any waythreaten the dignity and welfare of another individual.

6. If an action could harm an innocent other, then it should notbe done.

7. Deciding whether or not to perform an act by balancingthe positive consequences of the act against the negativeconsequences of the act is immoral.

8. The dignity and welfare of the people should be the mostimportant concern in any society.

9. It is never necessary to sacrifice the welfare of others.

10. Moral behaviors are actions that closely match ideals ofthe most “perfect” action.

11. There are no ethical principles that are so importantthat they should be a part of any code of ethics.

12. What is ethical varies from one situation and society toanother.

13. Moral standards should be seen as being individualistic;what one person considers to be moral may be judged to beimmoral by another person.

14. Different types of morality cannot be compared as to“rightness.”

15. Questions of what is ethical for everyone can never beresolved since what is moral or immoral is up to theindividual.

16. Moral standards are simply personal rules that indicatehow a person should behave, and are not be be applied in

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making judgments of others.

17. Ethical considerations in interpersonal relations are socomplex that individuals should be allowed to formulatetheir own individual codes.

18. Rigidly codifying an ethical position that preventscertain types of actions could stand in the way of betterhuman relations and adjustment.

19. No rule concerning lying can be formulated; whether a lieis permissible or not permissible totally depends uponthe situation.

20. Whether a lie is judged to be moral or immoral dependsupon the circumstances surrounding the action.

Additional Background Psychometric Information

The internal consistency coefficients of the idealism and relativism scales, as assessed byCronbach’s alpha, range from .73 to .84, and test-retest reliabilities were .67 and .66, respectively(Forsyth, 1980; Forsyth, Nye, & Kelley, 1988). Forsyth (1980) also found that the two scales wereorthogonal to one another, and were only slightly correlated with social desirability. Age trendswere significant, however, as older individuals tended to be slightly less idealistic in their outlook,but also less relativistic. The rs between and age and idealism and relativism were -.20 and -.25,respectively. Forsyth (1980) examined the relationship between the EPQ and moral maturity asmeasured by Rest’s Defining Issues Test (DIT; Rest et al., 1999) and Hogan’s Survey of EthicalAttitudes (SEA; Hogan, 1973). The P-score of the DIT did not correlate with the EPQ scores, andwhen individuals were classified into the 4 categories of the 2 (high vs. low on idealism) X 2 (highvs. low on realivism) model they did not occupy any developmental stage more frequently thananother. The EPQ’s relativism scale was, however, negatively correlated at -0.31 with Hogan’s(1973) SEA. This finding confirms the meaning of the relativism scale since low scores on the SEAare indicative of a rejection of societal regulatory standards in favor of an “ethics of personalconscience.” Forsyth et al. (1988) found that the idealism scale correlated .53 with scores on an“ethic of caring” (Gilligan, 1982). Subsequent analyses of these responses revealed differencesamong the 4 IMPs, in that absolutists scored significantly higher than situationists, who had higherscores than both the subjectivists and exceptionists.

Background: The original scaling work for the development of the Ethics Position Questionnairewas part of my dissertation conducted at the University of Florida, under the direction of BarrySchlenker. The committee included Dr. Marvin Shaw, Dr. Joel Cohen, Dr. Thomas Simon, Dr. LarrySevery, Dr. William Yost, and Dr. R. I Watson. Items from the EPQ were originally published inForsyth, D. R. (1980). A taxonomy of ethical ideologies. Journal of Personality and SocialPsychology, 39, 175-184.

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Permission: Permission is granted for use of the scale for research purposes, including theses anddissertations. Permission to publish the items or to use them for any commercial purpose must besecured from the American Psychological Association.

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