Ethics Position Questionnaire

1. Abstract

The Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ), developed by social psychologist Donelson R. Forsyth in 1980, is an established 20-item psychometric self-report instrument designed to measure individual differences in moral philosophy and ethical ideology. Grounded in normative ethics and personal moral philosophy, the EPQ measures two orthogonal conceptual dimensions: Idealism and Relativism. Idealism assesses the degree to which an individual assumes that desirable consequences can consistently be achieved without violating moral rules or causing harm to others, reflecting an unyielding commitment to humanitarian welfare. Conversely, Relativism reflects the extent to which an individual rejects universal, invariant moral rules in favor of relativistic, culturally contingent, or situation-specific ethical judgments. Crossing these two 10-item orthogonal axes yields a 2 × 2 taxonomy comprising four distinct ethical ideologies: Situationism (high idealism, high relativism), Absolutism (high idealism, low relativism), Subjectivism (low idealism, high relativism), and Exceptionism (low idealism, low relativism).

Respondents evaluate each item on a 9-point Likert response format ranging from 1 (“Completely disagree”) to 9 (“Completely agree”). Psychometric evaluations demonstrate robust internal consistency across diverse populations, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients routinely falling between α = .80 and .85 for the Idealism subscale and α = .73 and .82 for the Relativism subscale, alongside stable test-retest reliability across multiple-week intervals. Construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validities have been extensively validated across organizational behavior, business ethics, bioethics, social psychology, educational assessment, and cross-cultural psychometrics. This paper provides an exhaustive academic overview of the EPQ, detailing its structural taxonomy, psychometric properties, theoretical underpinnings, clinical and empirical applications, scoring mechanics, and its authentic instrument items.

2. Keywords

Ethics Position Questionnaire, personal moral philosophy, ethical ideology, idealism, relativism, situationism, absolutism, subjectivism, exceptionism, moral judgment, psychometrics, Donelson R. Forsyth

3. Authors

The Ethics Position Questionnaire was conceptualized, developed, and empirically validated by Donelson R. Forsyth, Ph.D. At the time of the instrument’s initial validation and seminal publication in 1980, Dr. Forsyth was affiliated with the Department of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. He later served as Professor of Psychology and held the Colonel Leo K. and Gaylee Thorsness Endowed Chair in Ethical Leadership at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond.

Dr. Forsyth is an internationally recognized scholar in social psychology, group dynamics, and moral psychology. His theoretical work synthesizing philosophical traditions with empirical social science produced the dominant taxonomic model of ethical ideologies. Communications regarding the original development of the scale and archival normative data historically correspond with the Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, and later the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia 23173.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Ethics Position Questionnaire is to measure individual variations in personal moral philosophies and to classify these variations along distinct cognitive axes. For decades, moral psychology had been dominated by cognitive developmental models, most notably Lawrence Kohlberg’s stage theory and James Rest’s Defining Issues Test (DIT). While Kohlbergian traditions focused predominantly on developmental sophistication and cognitive reasoning structures concerning justice and rights, they frequently overlooked the substantive, content-driven ethical presumptions that individuals utilize when confronting ambiguous, real-world moral dilemmas. The EPQ addresses this gap by assessing operationalized philosophical stances rather than hierarchical cognitive maturity.

Research Applications

The EPQ is widely deployed across social psychology, behavioral economics, organizational behavior, applied philosophy, and communication studies. In corporate governance and business ethics, investigators use the instrument to explore corporate social responsibility attitudes, fraudulent reporting propensity, whistleblower motivations, and compliance intentions among managers and accountants. In media ethics and political psychology, the EPQ clarifies how ideological orientations dictate audience evaluations of deception, privacy invasion, and investigative journalism practices. Furthermore, cross-cultural researchers utilize the EPQ to map societal variations in ethical ideologies across Eastern and Western cultural paradigms, uncovering systematic differences in cultural relativism and collective welfare commitments.

Clinical, Educational, and Professional Applications

In applied settings, such as healthcare and bioethics education, the EPQ serves as a diagnostic and pedagogical tool. Medical, dental, and nursing training programs administer the scale to facilitate self-reflection among practitioners regarding end-of-life decisions, resource allocation, and experimental clinical trials. In professional ethics workshops, understanding whether a trainee approaches conflicts from an Absolutist, Situationist, Exceptionist, or Subjectivist framework assists educators in tailoring interventions, enhancing ethical sensitivity, and bridging communication impasses between professionals holding incommensurable moral paradigms.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct underlying the Ethics Position Questionnaire is personal moral philosophy, defined as an integrated system of beliefs, values, attitudes, and cognitive rules that direct an individual’s moral evaluations, judgments, and behaviors. Forsyth conceptualized this construct not as a unidimensional trait or a developmental stage, but as a bivariate cognitive space structured by two independent, non-correlated core dimensions: Idealism and Relativism.

The Idealism Dimension

Idealism describes an individual’s fundamental presumptions regarding the consequences of actions and the inevitability of harm. Highly idealistic individuals believe that moral actions must invariably produce positive outcomes and that harm to others can, and must, always be avoided. They subscribe to an unyielding humanitarian optimism, assuming that a genuinely “right” action never requires harming an innocent individual or sacrificing the welfare of one party for the benefit of another. Conversely, individuals low in idealism operate from a pragmatic, utilitarian premise. They accept that life often presents tragic trade-offs where harm is an unavoidable cost of achieving greater aggregate utility, social order, or progress.

The Relativism Dimension

Relativism captures the extent to which an individual rejects universal, absolute moral principles, divine commands, or inviolate deontological duties. Highly relativistic individuals maintain that moral judgments are inherently context-dependent, idiosyncratic, and culturally contingent. They assert that rigid moral codifications impede adaptive human relations and that universal ethical mandates fail to account for the unique subtleties of specific circumstances. In contrast, non-relativistic (low relativism) individuals uphold the existence and authority of absolute moral laws, universal codes, and enduring virtues that apply universally across temporal, social, and situational boundaries.

The Four Ethical Ideologies

By conceptualizing Idealism and Relativism as orthogonal axes, Forsyth generated a 2 × 2 taxonomy defining four discrete ethical ideologies:

• Situationism (High Idealism, High Relativism): Situationists reject universal moral rules in favor of contextual analysis, yet they remain committed to achieving the best possible outcome for all involved without causing harm. They advocate a contextualist, agapic ethic reminiscent of Joseph Fletcher’s Situation Ethics, assessing moral propriety on a case-by-case basis through the lens of compassionate consequences.
• Absolutism (High Idealism, Low Relativism): Absolutists believe that actions are inherently right or wrong according to universal moral codes (e.g., Kantian deontology), and they simultaneously insist that positive consequences will inherently follow adherence to these universal duties. They maintain that moral rules must never be compromised and that following them will prevent harm.
• Subjectivism (Low Idealism, High Relativism): Subjectivists reject both universal ethical codes and the optimistic presumption that harm can always be avoided. They view moral judgments as fundamentally subjective, emotional, and personal. They evaluate ethical choices based on personal values, individual preferences, or self-interest, recognizing that moral consensus is an illusion and that negative consequences are often unavoidable.
• Exceptionism (Low Idealism, Low Relativism): Exceptionists believe that universal moral rules provide the necessary framework for moral conduct, but they pragmatically acknowledge that exceptions must occasionally be permitted to prevent greater harm or achieve pragmatic objectives. Resembling rule-utilitarians, they believe rules must guide conduct, but conformist dogmatism must yield when adherence causes catastrophic outcomes.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework of the EPQ bridges normative philosophical traditions with descriptive social-cognitive psychology. For centuries, philosophers debated moral epistemology across two primary divides: deontology (universal duties, rights, and rules advanced by Immanuel Kant) versus teleology/consequentialism (evaluating acts by their outcomes, advanced by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill), alongside moral absolutism versus moral relativism.

In developing the EPQ, Forsyth synthesized these traditions with the empirical insights of Robert Hogan (1970), who posited that moral character revolves around two functional dimensions: rule compliance (“rule of law”) and human welfare empathy (“ethics of responsibility”). Forsyth observed that lay individuals, unlike formal academic philosophers, do not adhere strictly to rigid academic doctrines. Instead, their intuitive moral cognition relies on heuristic variations across these philosophical themes. By formalizing these intuitions into Idealism (consequentialist-humanitarian concern for harm prevention) and Relativism (epistemological skepticism toward universal rules), Forsyth provided an empirical model for analyzing moral decision-making.

The theoretical architecture assumes orthogonality: a person’s belief about the inviolability of rules (relativism) does not mathematically or psychologically dictate their optimism about whether harm can be avoided in human affairs (idealism). This orthogonality challenges single-spectrum models of moral development and aligns with modern dual-process cognitive theories, such as Joshua Greene’s dual-process model of moral judgment, wherein deontological and utilitarian inclinations operate through semi-independent cognitive and affective networks.

7. Validity

Extensive psychometric investigations have established the construct, criterion, convergent, and discriminant validity of the Ethics Position Questionnaire across multiple populations, languages, and settings.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Forsyth’s initial validation studies (1980) demonstrated that the two-factor solution cleanly separates Idealism and Relativism items, with negligible cross-loadings. Confirmatory factor analyses conducted over the subsequent four decades across diverse professional cohorts—including business executives, healthcare providers, university students, and military personnel—have broadly affirmed this bifactorial construct validity, confirming that the two subscales function as independent latent constructs.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

Convergent validity has been established by correlating EPQ dimensions with established psychological, political, and philosophical measures. Idealism correlates positively with measures of empathy, altruism, social responsibility, and the Care/Harm foundation of Moral Foundations Theory. Relativism correlates positively with cognitive flexibility, Machiavellianism, moral disengagement, and tolerance for ambiguity, while correlating negatively with dogmatism, right-wing authoritarianism, and religiosity. Discriminant validity was substantiated by Forsyth (1980), demonstrating that neither subscale significantly correlates with social desirability response bias as assessed by the Edwards Social Desirability Scale, confirming that responses reflect genuine philosophical beliefs rather than impression management.

Criterion-Related and Predictive Validity

The EPQ exhibits predictive validity across empirical moral decision-making paradigms. Forsyth and Pope (1984) demonstrated that when evaluating scientific research involving deception or physical distress, Absolutists judge the research most harshly, condemning both the procedural violation of deception and the negative consequences experienced by participants. Situationists show leniency if the scientific benefits are high and subjects are ultimately protected. Subjectivists display individualized evaluation patterns, and Exceptionists endorse the use of deception if the pragmatic utility of the findings clearly outweighs the minor discomfort produced. Similar predictive fidelity has been demonstrated in studies on academic cheating, corporate whistleblowing, environmental conservation behaviors, and attitudes toward euthanasia.

8. Reliability

The Ethics Position Questionnaire demonstrates strong, stable internal consistency and temporal reliability across varied academic, clinical, and organizational samples.

Internal Consistency

In Forsyth’s original 1980 psychometric investigation, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were established at α = .80 for the 10-item Idealism subscale and α = .73 for the 10-item Relativism subscale. Subsequent cross-validation studies across larger and more diverse demographic samples have consistently yielded comparable or superior reliability estimates:

• Idealism Subscale: Internal consistency coefficients typically range from α = .80 to .86. The subscale demonstrates high item-to-total correlations, generally exceeding r = .45 across all ten items.
• Relativism Subscale: Cronbach’s alpha values typically fall between α = .73 and .82. Item-to-total correlations consistently fall between r = .38 and .60, reflecting cohesive thematic integrity regarding the rejection of moral universals.

Temporal Stability

Test-retest reliability has been verified across various time intervals. In an early validation sample of undergraduate students re-tested over a two-week interval, the test-retest correlation was r = .67 for Idealism and r = .66 for Relativism. Longitudinal studies assessing professional trainees over six-month to one-year periods indicate that personal moral philosophy remains stable in the absence of targeted ethical intervention, demonstrating that the EPQ measures stable dispositional frameworks rather than fluctuating affective states.

9. Factor Analysis

The psychometric derivation of the 20-item EPQ involved successive iterations of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and subsequent confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Analysis

Forsyth (1980) initially drafted a pool of 55 items reflecting diverse moral orientations. Following pilot testing on introductory psychology cohorts (N = 65), item-to-scale correlations were computed to winnow the pool to 27 items. These items were administered to subsequent cohorts, and a principal components factor analysis with an orthogonal varimax rotation was conducted. The factor analysis extracted two dominant factors accounting for the majority of common variance:

• Factor 1 (Idealism): Characterized by high factor loadings (> .40 to .75) for items emphasizing the absolute avoidance of harm, the preservation of personal dignity, and the pursuit of ideal positive outcomes.
• Factor 2 (Relativism): Characterized by robust factor loadings (> .40 to .72) for items rejecting universal ethical codes, emphasizing cultural and individual variations in moral rules, and highlighting the context-dependent nature of behavioral norms (such as lying).

Items exhibiting high secondary cross-loadings (> .30 on the opposing factor) or weak primary loadings (< .40) were eliminated, producing the refined 20-item instrument consisting of exactly two 10-item dimensions. Inter-scale correlation analyses confirmed that the Idealism and Relativism subscales share negligible variance (typically correlating between r = -.05 and r = .08), validating the orthogonal structure.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Cross-Cultural Invariance

Extensive structural equation modeling (SEM) and CFA studies across international populations have generally validated the two-factor orthogonal model. While some studies in non-Western populations have identified minor sub-dimensions (such as distinguishing between positive humanitarianism and risk-avoidance within Idealism, or between moral nihilism and contextual adaptability within Relativism), the classic two-factor orthogonal formulation remains the standard structural representation in psychometric literature.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ)
• Author: Donelson R. Forsyth (1980)
• Construct Measured: Personal Moral Philosophy (Ethical Ideology)
• Dimensional Structure: Two orthogonal subscales with 10 items each:
  • Idealism Subscale: Items 1 through 10
  • Relativism Subscale: Items 11 through 20
• Typological Classification: 2 × 2 taxonomy derived via median split or sample means:
  • Situationists: High Idealism, High Relativism
  • Absolutists: High Idealism, Low Relativism
  • Subjectivists: Low Idealism, High Relativism
  • Exceptionists: Low Idealism, Low Relativism
• Item Count: 20 items
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or digital questionnaire; average completion time is 5 to 10 minutes.
• Response Scale: 9-point Likert response scale:
  • 1 = Completely disagree
  • 2 = Largely disagree
  • 3 = Moderately disagree
  • 4 = Slightly disagree
  • 5 = Neither agree nor disagree
  • 6 = Slightly agree
  • 7 = Moderately agree
  • 8 = Largely agree
  • 9 = Completely agree
• Scoring Mechanics:
  • There are no reverse-scored items; all items are positively keyed toward their respective latent construct.
  • The Idealism Score is calculated as the arithmetic mean of items 1 through 10: $\text{Idealism} = \frac{\sum_{i=1}^{10} \text{Item}_i}{10}$. Scores range from 1.00 to 9.00.
  • The Relativism Score is calculated as the arithmetic mean of items 11 through 20: $\text{Relativism} = \frac{\sum_{i=11}^{20} \text{Item}_i}{10}$. Scores range from 1.00 to 9.00.
  • Sum scores may also be used (ranging from 10 to 90 per subscale), though mean scores are preferred in research to retain direct interpretability relative to the original 9-point response continuum.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Ethics Position Questionnaire was formally published in 1980 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by the American Psychological Association (APA). The instrument is widely treated as an open-access psychometric tool for non-commercial educational and academic research purposes. The scale’s author, Donelson R. Forsyth, has historically permitted free use of the scale by researchers and educators provided that proper scholarly citation is given to the seminal 1980 paper.

No royalty or commercial fee is required for academic investigations, theses, or classroom use. For commercial applications, executive training platforms, or proprietary corporate consulting interventions, permission should be coordinated in accordance with APA copyright guidelines and direct consultation with the author.

12. References

Forsyth, D. R. (1980). A taxonomy of ethical ideologies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(1), 175–184. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.39.1.175

Forsyth, D. R. (1992). Judging the morality of business practices: The influence of personal moral philosophies. Journal of Business Ethics, 11(5–6), 461–470. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00870557

Forsyth, D. R., Nye, J. L., & Kelley, K. (1988). Idealism, relativism, and the evaluation of unethical behavior. The Journal of Social Psychology, 128(2), 243–253. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.1988.9713743

Forsyth, D. R., O’Boyle, E. H., & McDaniel, M. A. (2008). East meets west: A meta-analytic investigation of cultural variations in idealism and relativism. Journal of Business Ethics, 83(4), 813–833. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-008-9667-6

Forsyth, D. R., & Pope, W. R. (1984). Ethical ideology and judgments of social ethical issues. The Journal of Social Psychology, 124(1), 35–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.1984.9713028

Hogan, R. (1970). A dimension of moral judgment. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 35(2), 205–212. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0029881

Kohlberg, L. (1968). The child as a moral philosopher. Psychology Today, 2(4), 25–30.

Rest, J. R., Cooper, D., Coder, R., Masanz, J., & Anderson, D. (1974). Judging the important issues in moral dilemmas—An objective measure of development. Developmental Psychology, 10(4), 491–501. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0036598

Schlenker, B. R., & Forsyth, D. R. (1977). On the ethics of psychological research. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13(4), 369–396. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(77)90006-3

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)