A PHILOSOPHICAL VALUE ANALYSIS OF THE CANADIAN CODE OF ETHICS FOR PSYCHOLOGISTS

The purpose of this paper was to explore, philosophically, the rationa le for the ranking of the principles of the Canadian Psychologists' co de of ethics. While this ranking has received some empirical support, it has yet to be grounded in theory. In order to overcome this concept ual deficiency, Hodgkinson's (1996) Value Paradigm was used as a criti cal framework for validating the hierarchical structure of the princip les of the code. The analysis revealed general acceptance for the rank ing. As a result, the code has gained not only the needed theoretical grounding for comprehensive support (i.e., theoretical and empirical) but also a more complete understanding of its content and axiological rationale.