Survey Results Revealed!

Here’s the moment you’ve been waiting for… My survey results!

After gathering the results from the surveys, I found some interesting responses. One thing to note is that majority of those surveyed had the same professor and the same class structure of lectures, class discussions, and video documentaries. Also, most of the respondents were male, reflecting the majority male business school at my university. However, all the students that took the survey are from Santa Clara University, which won’t give an accurate representation of business ethics class as a whole but rather a more detailed look at perspectives of SCU students.

I gathered research on the comfort level of both male and female students and how often they talked/thought about the concepts taught in class.

The Table 1 below shows the comfort level.

Table 1: “I am comfortable enough to participate in class.” (1=strongly agree, 4=strongly disagree)

According to Table 1, men are typically more comfortable participating in class compared to women, and women although are comfortable participating, have more varied responses. One possible factor for this could be that since there are more men in the classroom, women may feel intimidated to participate. Similarly for men, they may feel more comfortable being with people of the same gender. However, both men and women tended to agree that they felt comfortable participating in class.

Knowing that males tended to feel more comfortable participating in class, I was not surprised by the results found in both Chart 1 and 2. Chart 1 displays the responses of how often male and females thought about the concepts discussed in class while Chart 2 shows the frequency of male and female students talking to their peers about the concepts taught in class.

Chart 1: “How often did you think about the concepts taught in class outside of class?”

Chart 2: “How often did you discuss with a peer outside the class about the things you learned in class?”

Based on the two charts, the data suggests that women are less likely to think and talk about the concepts taught in class compared to men. This suggestion connects with the level of comfort experienced by women which seems to have an effect on the way women perceive the class.

In Table 2 the average ratings from both male and female students at SCU are displayed below.

Table 2: Average Rating on the Effectiveness of Business Ethics Classes on a Scale from 1 to 5

(1 = not effective, 5 = very effective)

Table 2 reveals that men view business ethics classes as more effective to their moral development compared to women. Looking at Chart 1 and 2, since men tended to think and talk more about the topics in class, it could be for those reasons that men tended to agree that business ethics classes are more effective than women thought. However, both men and women at SCU agree that business ethics are neutral in its effectiveness.

Based on the data, I can conclude that gender has an effect on the effectiveness of business ethics. Despite both men and women rating business ethics classes having a neutral effect on their moral development, men tended to be more responsive to business ethics classes and think and talk more about the concepts compared to women. 

I find this information shocking because when writing about this topic, I found two conflicting sources. One claimed that women were more responsive to business ethics courses to men while the other claimed the opposite. I initially thought that women would definitely be more responsive to business ethics class and I was shocked to discover that, according to my own data, men were more responsive. However, based off my data, I can also see the trends as to why men would be more responsive. For one thing, they are more comfortable in class and therefore engage more with the class inside and outside the classroom.

I am curious to see if having an all female class and all male for business ethics would drastically alter my data.