An International Meeting of the American Accounting Association American Accounting Association 2006 Annual Meeting August 6–9, 2006 Washington, D.C.

Donald L. Ariail
Texas A&M University - Kingsville

Abstract: The individual traits of moral development and personal values are theoretically linked to ethical behavior. This paper reports the gender differences found in a study of these traits with a large sample of CPAs. Moral development was measured with the mean P and N2 scores of the Defining Issues Test (DIT). Personal value priorities were determined with the median rankings of the 36 values of the Rokeach Value Survey (RVS). The median test found significant gender differences in the rankings of four of the RVS values. The t-test of the mean DIT scores also found significant gender differences. For both the P and N2 indices, the mean scores of the female CPAs were higher than the mean scores of the male CPAs. Thus, for this sample of CPAs, the females have a higher level of moral development than their male counterparts.

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