Development of ethical sensitivity and moral judgment of psychologists and health professionals: a comparative study

• Grant number: 05/04739-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: March 01, 2006
• End date: December 31, 2008
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Human Development Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Janete de Aguirre Bervique
• Grantee: Gabriel Gonçalves Mattos
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências da Saúde de Garça (FASU). Associação Cultural e Educacional de Garça (ACEG). Garça , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research has as its objective to measure the ethical sensibility and the moral judgment level of Psychology students from Faculdade de Ciências da Saúde de Garça (FASU) (Garça Health Science College FASU) and to analyze if the introduction of The Transversal Themes Bio-ethics: research which involves human beings, Prevetion: primary attention and Human Ecology: interpersonal relationships to the pedagogical project of the mentioned course has influence on the ethical/moral development of its student body. The research will be done with all the FASU Psychology students (N = 147). The research tools will be: a semi-guided questionnaire and the Defining Issues Test (DIT), short version, which will be applied in two different moments, at the beginning of the Transversal Themes introduction (at the beginning of 2005 second semester) and at the end of 2006 second semester. The collected data will be analyzed through a software SPSS/PC (Statistic Package for Social Science/ Personal Computer for Windows version 9.0). The answers will be analyzed and compared according to age, gender and the term the respondent is in, and according to the moment the instruments were applied. These variables will be crossed in order to identify if there is any existing differences in answer types that can be found and if these are statistically significant. The statistical operations that will be used are: simple frequency, percentage and qui-square. The results will be presented to the coordination of the investigated course after the first phase of instrument application as well as right after the second application phase. This way, they will be a reference to the mentioned course faculty’s pedagogical capability in respect to the inclusion of transversal themes. Also, they will contribute to the evaluation of the results provided by this pedagogical research.