Abstract:

Background:
The current society and new scientific advances have generated several ethical problems. This fact requires that the University context provides the students with the necessary ethical tools to improve their critical-thinking skills and ethical knowledge which should form their ethical position. In order to evaluate students’ ethical position, creation of appropriate assessment tools are needed. The Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ), created in 1980 by Donelson R Forsyth, is one of the most used ethics assessment questionnaires by researchers. However, this questionnaire has never been validated in Spanish population, in general, and Spanish university population, in particular.

Objectives:
To obtain a reliable and valid ethics questionnaire to be used in students, researchers and teachers of different faculties of Spain.

Methods:
A translation of the EPQ from English to Spanish has to be carried out. Then, cultural adaptations are discussed by experts in the field. Then, another bilingual person reviews the resulted questionnaire, comparing it with the original. Then, an understanding-check trial with no less than 100 Spanish people has to be developed. Validation and concurrent validation using Ethics Orientation Scale (EOS) is expected to be done with no less than 1000 Spanish people from different territories.

Conclusions:
A Spanish version of an appropriate ethics-assessment questionnaire is necessary in order to evaluate ethics in college studies. This would allow to develop a needed quality ethics program in the college environment.

Keywords:

Ethical position, University Education, Assessment.