Nurses Remain at Top of Honesty and Ethics Poll

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PRINCETON, NJ – For the second year in a row, Gallup’s survey on honesty and ethics in professions finds that the American public rates nursing as the field with the highest standards of honesty and ethics. Almost eight in 10 Americans -- 79% -- say nurses have "very high" or "high" ethical standards. Pharmacists finish second with 67%. Pharmacists had consistently finished first in the survey, until nurses were added to the list in 1999.

Two other professions involving medical health were also rated highly for their honesty and ethics -- sixty-six percent of Americans say that veterinarians have high or very high ethical standards, while medical doctors are given a rating of 63% on the same measure. The top ten most ethical professions (as rated by the public) are rounded out by grade school and high school teachers, the clergy, college teachers, dentists, engineers and policemen.

Here is the Top 10 list of "very high" or "high" honesty and ethics.

While medical practitioners enjoy exceptionally high ratings for their perceived ethics, most other professionals, including journalists, business executives, building contractors, and real estate agents, rate at least "average" on Gallup’s integrity scale. A few job titles, particularly car salesmen and lawyers, stand out for having relatively high negative ratings. However, only one profession is rated as having "low" or "very low" standards by a majority of Americans: car sales.

Indeed, the public has viewed car sales as the least ethical profession since Gallup began asking the question in 1977, and this year is no different. Only 7% of Americans currently say that car salesmen have very high or high honesty and ethical standards. But car salesmen are not the only professionals the public sees in this negative light. Advertising practitioners and insurance salesmen are viewed as honest and ethical by 10% of the public, while just 16% say that about newspaper reporters. The "bottom five" is completed with a three-way tie. Only 17% of Americans view the honesty and ethics of labor union leaders, real estate agents, and lawyers as high or very high.

Elected Officials Draw Less Than Rave Reviews
Americans remain skeptical of the honesty and ethics of their elected officials. As with every previous year, less than half the public said any elected official on Gallup’s list had "very high" or "high" honesty and ethics. Of the elected positions tested, state governors finish highest with very high or high ratings from 30% of the public, followed by local officeholders with 25%, state senators with 24%, and congressmen with 21%. For a sense of context, these ratings place elected officials in about the same range as TV reporters (21%), auto mechanics (22%), building contractors (23%) and business executives (23%).

Opinion of News Professionals’ and Lawyers’ Ethics Steadily Declining
The long-term trends of Gallup’s honesty and ethics survey reveal a growing skepticism among the American public regarding the ethics of news professionals and lawyers. The three news professions surveyed all remain significantly lower than when they were first placed on the list. Twenty-one percent of the public says journalists are honest and ethical, a percentage that has declined steadily from its debut of 33% in 1977. Two specific news professions that first appeared on the list in 1981, TV reporting and newspaper reporting, have also dipped significantly. Currently, 21% of the public rates TV reporters as having high ethical standards; down steadily from the 36% they received in 1981. Similarly, just 16% of the public gives newspaper reporters very high or high ethical ratings. Again, this percentage has decreased consistently since 1981, when it was 30%.

Lawyers are often the punch line to jokes regarding professional ethics and honesty. They debuted on Gallup’s survey list in 1977 with 26%. Lawyers have not been rated as having high ethical standards by more than 20% of the public since 1991, and the latest poll shows a rating of 17%.

Survey Methods

The results reported here are based on telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of 1,028 adults, 18 years and older, conducted November 13-15, 2000. For results based on the whole sample, one can say with 95 percent confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or minus 3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Please tell me how you would rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these different fields -- very high, high, average, low, or very low? First, ... Next, ...[RANDOM ORDER]

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PERCENT SAYING "VERY HIGH" / "HIGH"

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PERCENT SAYING "VERY HIGH" / "HIGH" (continued)

*Less than 0.5%