VALIDATION OF A SITUATIONAL JUDGMENT TEST FOR ENGINEERING ETHICS DECISION MAKING

Abstract

Ethical decision-making is an important skill for engineers to have because the work they do can have high stakes for social, environmental, and safety reasons. Despite the growing emphasis on ethics education in current engineering programs, there remains a lack of comprehensive, psychology-based tools that collect data on students' ethical reasoning in context. The purpose of this study was to validate a Situational Judgment Test (SJT) that was specifically designed to measure ethical decision-making in engineering students. The SJT presents respondents with difficult judgment scenarios that are relevant to their discipline, and draws from moral psychology and cognitive decision-making theory. We studied 150 undergraduate engineering students. The validation process consisted of content validation with expert panels, construct validation through exploratory factor analysis, and criterion-related validation correlating SJT scores with previous ethics training or courses and academic performance. We confirmed reliability based on high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.82) and stable test-retest reliability. Results showed the SJT successfully captures moral reasoning variation across levels of experience, and also supports theoretical constructs associated with ethical sensitivity and decision-making. This validated SJT provides educators, researchers, and (hopefully) educational program administrators, a relatively simple, grounded-in-empirical research tool to assess and improve ethical reasoning in engineering courses. Its inclusion in formal training or educational program can help demonstrate both formative and summative evaluation of students' ethical reasoning. Its integration into ethics training programs can support both formative feedback and longitudinal tracking of moral development among future professionals.