The Challenges of Assessing In-the-Moment Ethical Decision-Making

Abstract The engineering education community lacks a consensus on an effective assessment tool to gauge the growth of undergraduate students' ethical reasoning throughout a course or program. The Engineering Ethics Reasoning Instrument (EERI) was developed by a team at Purdue and is based on the NSPE Code of Ethics 1,2. Previous research has shown that the EERI failed to detect significant growth in ethical reasoning during a single-semester course, which contained substantial ethics content 3. We hypothesized that perhaps the EERI could detect a significant change in students' ethical reasoning over the course of a four-year undergraduate program, during which students are typically exposed to many engineering-contextualized ethical dilemmas, both via coursework as well as potential work experiences. Using a quasi-experimental design, we used the EERI to measure changes in the ethical reasoning of 178 undergraduates at a Public R1 university in the Northeast across multiple engineering disciplines. Analysis of EERI data typically focuses on two outputs - a student's P score and N2 score. The P score measures the extent to which students employ Kohlbergian postconventional thinking, which is characterized by ethical reasoning based on universal good 1,4. The N2 score takes into account how much postconventional thinking is used and preconventional (self-interested) thinking is absent 1,4. We found that over the course of the four-year program, the EERI did not indicate any change in N2 score (n = 178, p = 0.65), but showed a decrease of -3.38 in P score (n = 178, p = 0.017). This suggests that over four years, there is a reduction in students prioritizing decisions that were altruistic and based on universal good. It is challenging to predict why this occurs, but we tentatively suggest that it may reflect a more accurate representation of students' thoughts on these ethical dilemmas. Additionally, it might indicate a deeper consideration of the complex factors typically involved in real ethical decisions, rather than merely an abstract evaluation of what a reasonable engineer should do. Given these results and to gain a fuller understanding of students' changes in ethical reasoning throughout their undergraduate programs, we contend that qualitative measures should also be employed. Ethical reasoning can be ill-defined and multidimensional, making quantification of a student's ethical reasoning challenging and difficult to interpret. A qualitative instrument designed to be 1st person, situated, contextually-rich, and playful might more accurately capture students' in-the-moment ethical decision-making.