Measuring ethical development in life sciences students: a study using Perry's developmental model

The scheme devised by Perry is appropriate to measure the development of the ways that students approach complex information during young adulthood. This article describes the development of a methodology to study students' understanding of meta-ethical concepts, which has been the less studied element of Perry's model. It is important to understand students' levels of ethical development in order to design teaching to support their ethical development. A Meta-ethical Questionnaire was devised and implemented together with an ethics education programme at the Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences at the University of Glasgow. From the results it was found that students' meta-ethical development is a natural process in young adulthood, though male students progressed later than female students. Tailor-made ethics teaching may provide support for this development.