Perception of Ethical Issues Among the Law Enforcement and Firefighter Psychologists From Romania

Ethical psychological practice is essential for beneficiaries' protection and welfare. This survey research addressed a specific issue, namely compliance with and beliefs about ethical principles and standards of psychologists from the Romanian national law enforcement and firefighting organizations. A total of 140 psychologists, 60.08% of target group members, rated frequency and ethical character of 139 ethically questionable behaviors. Several positive ethical elements were found as lack of almost universal behaviors and many rare behaviors (46.04%). Among the ethical problems found were counted: behaviors and beliefs related to the involvement in ethical practice promotion among psychologists and to the interaction with coordinating and homologous psychologists in the professional or ethical impasse situations. The highest quality ratings of resources for ethical practice guiding and training were made for Code of Deontology and the lowest for legal cases. Several solutions were proposed to improve ethical professional awareness and practice of target group members. The present research showed the difficulty of finding benchmarks to interpret results of an ethical research and the need to approach ethical issues not only from the quantitative view but also from qualitative and/or transcultural view.