Ethics training and decision-making

A national web-based survey using SurveyMonkey.com was administered to 700 undergraduate computer science programs in the United States as part of a stratified random sample of 797 undergraduate computer science programs. The 251 program responses (36% response rate) regarding social and professional issues (computer ethics) are presented. This article describes the demographics of the respondents, presents results concerning whether programs teach social and professional issues, who teaches, the role of training in these programs, the decision making process as it relates to computer ethics and why some programs are not teaching computer ethics. Additionally, we provide suggestions for computer science programs regarding ethics training and decision-making and we share reasons why schools are not teaching computer ethics.