Trail-Blazing Tool: A Neuroethics Competency Measure in Development

Is it possible to scale ethical understanding? What does it mean to be competent in neuroethics? Neuroethicist and Loyola University Chicago philosophy professor Joe Vukov and a team from the DANA Program for Neuroscience & Society at Loyola are developing a tool that provides answers to both of these questions. 

“There’s not a tool like it yet,” Vukov said. “Bioethics in general is a relatively new field. It's only really been around since the 70s. Neuroethics is even newer than that, so it's not shocking there's nothing to measure this yet.”

As neurotechnology and science advanced, no standardized measure existed – until now – to assess whether or not researchers and students were equipped to navigate the ethical implications of their research. The Neuroethics Awareness Scale is a series of questions designed to measure people’s awareness of various ethical issues in neuroscience and their confidence in understanding related concepts.

Vukov, alongside team members Elizabeth Wakefield and Demetri Morgan, developed the tool  in the Summer of 2024 when they needed a way to measure engagement in and awareness of neuroethics for their summer ETHOS project. The current gaps in learning or training can now be addressed and amended using feedback provided by the competency scale.

Vukov said the tool was shaped by the different perspectives offered from the program’s interdisciplinary team. “We have neuroscience, specialists in higher education, journalism, I do neuroethics work,” Vukov said. “So it's really a cool project that I don’t think you would have had if any of us would have been working on something like this on our own.”

The final version of the tool will be able to take on multiple forms — whether it be as an online survey or a physical, paper questionnaire. It can be used by educators, students, trainees, researchers, or anyone with an interest in neuroscience. The team is already presenting its findings and soft-sharing the scale with different groups. After testing the measure with a full class of neuroethics students in the Fall of 2026, the final Neuroethics Awareness Scale is set to be published and released in early 2027.