Exploratory Factor Analysis of the Ethical Orientation Scale

Abstract

This study is to validate the 20 items of Ethics Position Questionnaire scale, developed by Forsyth (1980) within the Malaysian environment. It is necessary to find out the relevancy of the items towards Malaysian culture since the scale is originated from the western country. In addition, this study is also aims to understand the structure of correlations among each measured variables. An exploratory factor analysis is applied in order to generate simpler and more explicitly defined constructs to classify the ethical orientation scales based on Malaysian respondents. The results revealed that there are only 13 items of the Ethics Position Questionnaire scale used to measure the ethical orientation of an individual. The seven (7) items are dropped from the total items due to two reasons: (1) Insufficient item loading on the component and (2) Duplication of questions. In contrary to the previous findings, the constructs found in this study are being classified into three dimensions rather than two dimensions of ethical orientation. The rationalization of the new dimensions and implications of the findings are discussed.