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The development and validation of the Ethical Climate Index
Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to develop and validate a perceptual instrument to measure the ethical climate of an institution's graduate and professional school programs, the Ethical Climate Index (ECI). The theoretical framework of the ECI involved the application of five ethical principles to three major environments within graduate and professional school programs. Items for the ECI were developed by meeting informally with graduate and professional school students and reviewing related environmental instruments and sources pertaining to the ethical principles and graduate and professional school environments. The content validity of the items was evaluated by an expert in the university ethical climate area and two item review panels. As a result of the item reviews, a 122-item ECI was formed that contains items related to each of the three graduate and professional school environments and five ethical principles. For further validation, the ECI was distributed, along with the CUES Community Scale (Pace, 1969), to 852 graduate and professional school students from 10 major areas and programs within a large midwestern university. Of the 852 students surveyed, 527 responded, providing a return rate of 62%. Based on the students' responses, the reliability estimate of the ECI was found to be.97. The ECI's construct validity was evaluated by (1) factor analyzing students responses to the ECI items, (2) correlating students' ECI ratings with their scores on the CUES Community Scale, and (3) investigating differences on mean ECI ratings across the major areas surveyed. The results suggested that the ECI was measuring a single, unique construct, not assessed by the CUES Community Scale. In addition, students' perceptions of the ethical climate differed significantly across the major areas of the institution surveyed. Thus, the results of this study indicated that the ECI can assess the ethical climate of an institution's graduate and professional school programs with an acceptable degree of reliability and validity.
Subject Area
Educational evaluation|Higher education
Recommended Citation
Schulte, Laura E, "The development and validation of the Ethical Climate Index" (1990). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9034288.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9034288