Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

To whom it may concern,

I am planning on conducting an experiment that will test whether the ethical values of a large group can have an impact on the ethical values of individuals. The independent variable will be the individual’s (being surveyed) perception of what other members of the group (being surveyed) have selected on a survey measuring ethical opinions/values.

During the survey, the subjects will be listening to questions orally and then casting their vote for questions individually based on their own ethical evaluation of whatever the question poses. They will write their vote on a slip of paper and I will collect it. I will repeat this until the survey is over.

For the 1st experimental group, the subjects would take the oral survey as normally. However, when they pass up their votes to the me, the I will then clearly tally on a chalkboard what all of the members of the group voted for, and orally clarify the results to the subjects. In two other experimental groups however, after receiving all of the votes, I will only pretend to read the ballets as he marks tallies. Unknown to the subjects, I will be tallying a pre-planned set of answers to the current question, which is based upon the mean answers received during the control group, but is formulated to having a bias from the average answers. Another control group would be used to place a bias in the opposite direction. These contrived answers to survey questions would be continued to be used throughout the experiment, and later it would be tested to see whether the new perception of their group’s voting patterns changed their voting in later questions. The processing the results will show whether individuals will alter their voting on this basis.

The problem is, I'm having a lot of trouble finding a good survey to base the experiment off of. What I really need is a survey that is well-accepted/published, uses questions that are on the same subject so that the voting of previous questions applies to future ones, and I need questions that are answered anywhere between a scale of 1-7 to 1-4. This is because, logistically, I probably will need to have one fake tally for each value on the scale. Otherwise, someone could vote for, let's say 6, and if I don't have 6 as one of the votes of the fake results, they will think that there is some kind of mistake. I am hoping that if someone was aware of a published/unpublished survey that relates to ethics/morality, you could give me the name or website of the test. Also, I would greatly appreciate any constructive advice on the layout of the experiment. If anyone has any criticism for improving the clarity of the experiment, improving its validity, better defining the variables, etc., I would be extremely grateful for the help.

Thank you for your time,
Aaron Pomeranz

Hi,

I suggest you try a google search on the term "published ethics survey". There are several hits that might be a good match for you.

Best Regards,

Barrett Tomlinson

From your description, I see you have given a lot of thought to this question.

Generally, you are trying to determine if people change their opinions based on what others may think. This is based generally on the idea that we tend to conform to the prevailing public opinion (conformity).

To simplify your experiment, you can try to "prejudice" your targets before they complete a questionnaire. You can provide different information to some randomized groups and see if you get different results.

Suppose you are trying to determine whether people think it is OK to cross the street against a red light, or outside of a cross walk. To one group, you could describe how many accidents occur when pedestrians don't obey the rules. To the other group, you can say that people feel a false sense of safety when in the cross walk and so more accidents occur. The groups could differ in their answers to this question (and you would need to be able to measure and quantify this difference).

I'm sorry if this is off the mark, but I'm trying to give you some concrete ideas that you can put to use.

Good luck on your project!