ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Genet.
Sec. ELSI in Science and Genetics
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fgene.2025.1594724
This article is part of the Research TopicInsights in ELSI in Science and Genetics 2024-2025View all 3 articles
The Genetic Technologies Questionnaire in the Greek-Speaking Population: The Moral Judgement of the Lay Public
Provisionally accepted
- 1Network Aging Research, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
- 2Department of Philosophy, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
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Advancements in life sciences have significantly boosted biomedical capabilities. Genetic testing forecasts hereditary traits and disease susceptibility, while CRISPR/Cas allows permanent genome alterations.However, ethical considerations arise regarding the morality of these capabilities, particularly concerning the moral status, autonomy, and privacy of living beings. The lack of valid instruments to assess moral judgment in genetic technologies highlights the need for this study, aiming to translate and validate the "Genetic Technologies Questionnaire" (GTQ) and the short version of the "Conventional Technologies Questionnaire"As the full version of the GTQ with 30 questions could be too extensive for some studies, we also tested other versions: The short versions GTQ20-GR and GTQ5-GR which were already presented in the original study, as well as a version which included questions solely about humans (GTQ-H-GR) and is intended for use in human research and therapy, and the GTQ-Moral Status (GTQ-MS-GR), which included questions about genetic testing and gene editing in different living beings to investigate differences in moral status.A cross-sectional study involved 250 participants who completed an online questionnaire, assessing internal consistency, structural validity, known-groups validity, floor/ceiling effects, and retest reliability (subset of 50 participants). Correlational analyses explored relationships with education, age, genetics knowledge, religiosity, and genetic testing experience. The study followed the STROBE checklist for reporting.The GTQ-GR (Cronbach's α = 0.929) and GTQ20-GR (α = 0.935) exhibit high reliability and stability in assessing moral judgment among lay people, whereas the GTQ5-GR (α = 0.866) and CTQ5-GR (α = 0.758) displayed some weaknesses. Participants tended to rate conventional technologies more favorably than genetic technologies, with genetic testing perceived more positively than genome editing. The two additional derived versions, GTQ-H-GR (α = 0.859) and GTQ-MS-GR (α = 0.787), also demonstrated solid psychometric characteristics.The GTQ-GR is a valid and reliable questionnaire, demonstrating strong psychometric properties and is now available in the Greek language.
Keywords: Genetic technologies, Genome editing, Genetic Testing, Ethics, knowledge, Moral status, autonomy, Religiosity
Received: 16 Mar 2025; Accepted: 25 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Melchior, Angelidou, Chorianopoulou and Teichmann. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Birgit Teichmann, Network Aging Research, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
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