Abstract Discusses the use of a multivariate measure in evaluating the perceptions of accountants. Review of literature on the development of codes of ethics; Role of accounting profession's responsibility to society; Development of the multidimensional ethics measure; Survey and data gathering; Link between multivariate ethics measure and behavioral intentions.

Abstract The article focuses on a reply, by the author, to a comment on his paper "A Multidimensional Analysis of Selected Ethical Issues in Accounting," that was published in a previous issue of the journal "The Accounting Review." The authors of the comment focus on two. The first issue concerns the failure to include in our study the work of authors L. Kohlberg and J. Rest. The second issue involves the high reliability measures that were present in the paper. The multivariate approach is situation-specific, temporal and process-oriented, while the moral development approach is general, enduring, and trait-oriented. The defining issues test (DIT) uses scenarios unrelated to ethical problems in accounting to place individuals in one of the six stages of moral development according to the relative importance of different justifications by respondents. The expectation is that individuals who use a certain method of reasoning for the DIT scenarios will continue to use the same approach for ethical reasoning in other situations.