An empirical comparison of a psychology ethics course and audiovisual instruction in ethics

A course in ethics and professional issues in psychology was compared with an audiovisual teaching stimulus. The Recognition of Ethical Issues teaching stimulus consisted of four psychotherapy vignettes and commentary relative to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists. Potential ethical issues were embedded in the vignettes of a simulated long-term psychotherapy process.;The effectiveness of the dependent measure, The Ethical Discrimination Inventory (EDI; Baldick, 1980), was compared with a pilot measure, The Ethical Issues Recognition Form (EIRF; Baldwin, 1991). The EIRF was developed in an attempt to update and improve the measurement of ethical issues recognition.;A total of sixteen males and thirty females, 25 of whom had taken the ethics course and 21 who had not taken the course, participated in this research. Participants were graduate students in Counseling Psychology, Clinical Psychology, School Psychology, Counselor Education, Developmental Psychology, Mental Retardation/Developmental Disabilities, and Marriage and Family Therapy from a large mid-western university.;The results indicated that the Recognition of Ethical Issues teaching stimulus significantly improved the participants' ability to recognize the presence of ethical issues. Support also was found for the efficacy of the course in ethics and professional issues. Those participants who had taken the ethics course identified significantly more ethical issues on all dependent measures than did those who had not taken the course.;Support was found for the EIRF as a more effective measure of the ability of participants to recognize ethical issues than the EDI. Participants scored significantly higher on the EIRF than on the EDI even though the total possible score was greater for the EDI. Recommendations for future research were offered. The suggestion was made that a series of audiovisual instruction materials be developed for education in ethics in psychology. Further development of The Ethical Issues Recognition Form was recommended.