A Preliminary Investigation of the Universality of the Personal Selling Ethics Scale

A preliminary study of the generalizability of the Personal Selling Ethics Scale (Dabholkar and Kellaris 1992), a twenty-item scenario scale, was conducted using data from eight universities from four countries. Results, presented in Table 1, indicate significant differences between universities (Hotellings F = 5.05, p < .001). All but PSE 9 produced significant differences. Sheffe mean multiple comparison analysis suggests that differences of .2 are significant. However, all universities viewed the controversial sales practices, on average, as "slightly unethical" and ranked the twenty individual scenarios similarly. These judgments of controversial sales practices may be generalizable to all business students.