Photo by Hush Naidoo on Unsplash
Nurses in the U.S. continue to receive high marks for honesty and ethics, according to a Gallup report published Jan. 6.
Besting the next highest-rated profession (engineers) by 19 percentage points, nurses were perceived to have very high or high “honesty and ethical standards” by 85% of U.S. adults.
This is the 18th year in a row that the nursing profession has topped Gallup’s list.
Thirty-one percent of respondents rated nurses “very high” and 54% “high.” This was the largest percentage for both categories by 11% and 5%, respectively.
Following nurses and engineers were medical doctors (65% very high / high), pharmacists (64%), dentists (61%) and police officers (54%). No other profession received more than 50% of responses in the very high / high category.
Clergy perception improved three points to 40% from last year, placing them 10th in the list of 22 professions surveyed. Yet, this increase is within the plus-or-minus 4% margin of error.
A total of 10% of respondents rated clergy very high in honesty and ethics, while 30% said high, 42% average, 10% low and 5% very low. The remaining percentage had no opinion.
Since 2003, clergy perception has seen an overall decline of 16 percentage points in very high / high responses. During this time period, a high point of 58% was reached in 2006 before a gradual decline to a low of 37% in 2018.
Car salespeople held the lowest spot in 2019 with only 9% rating their ethics / honesty very high or high, followed closely by members of Congress (12%). Senators, insurance salespeople and advertising practitioners all received 13%, while stockbrokers were at 14%.
The full report is available here. The topline results are available here.
This article originally appeared on EthicsDaily.com.
