| Sumario: | A questionnaire was used to ascertain the ethical beliefs of 65 computer science students at a state university with regard to seven hypothetical situations faced by programmers and managers in the high-tech world. For each character in a scenario, and for each situation associated with that character, subjects could decide that the character had acted ethically, had acted unethically, or that no ethical problem existed. The students indicated their sex, age, economic background, whether they had taken a philosophy or ethics course, and personal and family work history in the computer systems field. Their ethical judgments differed significantly from those of a group of older, more experienced experts in the high-tech field who completed the same questionnaire. The students were less apt than the experts to see some situations as posing an ethical dilemma. Specific findings, including demographics-related variations in students' judgments, are examined.
|