The Nonprofit Ethics Survey: A Contextual Approach
type: CreativeWork
description: Organizational ethics require the attention of nonprofit leaders as regulatory trends and accountability measures increase. In spite of this interest, little empirical research has been conducted on ethics assessment within the nonprofit sector and more importantly, no survey instrument currently exists exclusively designed for nonprofit organizations to assess the perceptions of ethics within their organization. This lack of tools and information prohibits comprehensive self-assessment, and forces a reactive, single-loop approach to ethical issues, rather than a feedback system based on actual data. To address this need, the Nonprofit Ethics Survey provides a practioner-friendly survey designed to assess the perceptions of ethics held by the affiliates of nonprofit organizations. Development of the instrument occurred through the use of factor analysis, specifically, two principal components analyses, conducted on a sample of 530 nonprofit affiliates; which included 78 board members. The results of the first factor analysis identified the following six underlying constructs: Transparency; Daily-Ethics Behaviors of Board Members; Open Communication; Daily-Ethics Behaviors of Senior Staff; Decision Making; and Accountability. The second principal components analysis, conducted on a question set only responded to by voting board members, yielded a promising preliminary seventh construct to measure Governance. Taken together, the two principal components analyses facilitated the revision of the survey to achieve a parsimonious means of measuring the perceptions of ethics within nonprofit organizations. Additionally, a measure of Cronbach's Alpha was calculated for each scale in the survey to determine the level of internal consistency; these coefficients ranged from 0.86–0.94, indicating the survey provides a reliable means of measuring the constructs related to organizational ethics in nonprofit agencies. Each scale in the Nonprofit Ethics Survey uses Likert-style que…
abstract: Organizational ethics require the attention of nonprofit leaders as regulatory trends and accountability measures increase. In spite of this interest, little empirical research has been conducted on ethics assessment within the nonprofit sector and more importantly, no survey instrument currently exists exclusively designed for nonprofit organizations to assess the perceptions of ethics within their organization. This lack of tools and information prohibits comprehensive self-assessment, and forces a reactive, single-loop approach to ethical issues, rather than a feedback system based on actual data. To address this need, the Nonprofit Ethics Survey provides a practioner-friendly survey designed to assess the perceptions of ethics held by the affiliates of nonprofit organizations. Development of the instrument occurred through the use of factor analysis, specifically, two principal components analyses, conducted on a sample of 530 nonprofit affiliates; which included 78 board members. The results of the first factor analysis identified the following six underlying constructs: Transparency; Daily-Ethics Behaviors of Board Members; Open Communication; Daily-Ethics Behaviors of Senior Staff; Decision Making; and Accountability. The second principal components analysis, conducted on a question set only responded to by voting board members, yielded a promising preliminary seventh construct to measure Governance. Taken together, the two principal components analyses facilitated the revision of the survey to achieve a parsimonious means of measuring the perceptions of ethics within nonprofit organizations. Additionally, a measure of Cronbach's Alpha was calculated for each scale in the survey to determine the level of internal consistency; these coefficients ranged from 0.86–0.94, indicating the survey provides a reliable means of measuring the constructs related to organizational ethics in nonprofit agencies. Each scale in the Nonprofit Ethics Survey uses Likert-style que…
author: Barrett, Audrey Dawn, PhD
keywords: accountability, contextual approach, daily-ethics behaviors, decision-making, Leadership studies, management, nonprofit ethics survey, open communication, organizational ethics, transparency
date published: 2008-04-01T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T05:41:42Z
provider: University of San Diego
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of San Diego