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Ethical Awareness Among Undergraduate Engineering Students: A Quantitative Survey Study at Halic University, Istanbul

Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Ethical awareness is a core professional competency for engineers navigating complex sociotechnical decisions, yet empirical evidence from non-Western higher education contexts remains sparse. This cross-sectional survey study (N = 430) examines the level, internal structure, and demographic correlates of ethical awareness among undergraduate engineering students at an English-medium Turkish university, across three theoretically grounded domains: Ethical Awareness, Ethical Attitudes, and Ethical Behavior. Grounded in Rest's (1986) Four-Component Model, the study employs a validated 11-item instrument (Cronbach's alpha = .966) and applies descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, multiple linear regression, independent-samples t-tests, and one-way ANOVA. Findings reveal moderately high overall awareness (M = 7.40/11) alongside a practically significant attitude-behavior gap: Ethical Behavior (M = 6.38) lagged cognitive-affective domains by 1.35 to 1.53 scale points. Domain-level regression confirmed that Ethical Attitudes and Awareness together explained 54.5% of behavioral variance (R² = .545), with Attitudes as the stronger predictor (beta = .441). No significant gender or year-of-study differences were detected, and ethics course completers scored directionally higher without reaching significance, likely due to insufficient power. These findings document a persistent attitude-behavior gap consistent with ethical fading theory and provide evidence-grounded recommendations for active-learning pedagogy vertically integrated across engineering curricula.
DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-9503996/v1
Institution: Haliç University
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7155711310
Cites: 20
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Related to: 10