DQ 2 : Based on your response to Topic 4 DQ 1, provide a decision tree of how you came to the decision of ethical theory application.

Build the object the prompt asked for. A decision tree has a starting question, branch points with a stated criterion at each one, and terminal nodes that are decisions rather than feelings. Rendered as text, that means a numbered sequence where each step says what you asked, what answer you got, and where that answer sent you. Start with the dilemma stated precisely enough to have branches: not 'an ethical issue in my project' but, for example, whether to include patients who cannot consent for themselves in an intervention likely to benefit them. Then the first checkpoint. The Kidder ethical fitness model the brief names begins by testing whether this is a genuine right-versus-right conflict or merely right-versus-wrong, and that distinction is the branch most students skip — a great many cases dissolve the moment you notice one option is simply wrong. Write the dilemma down first, because a vague one cannot be branched at all.

From there the branches follow the model's own checkpoints: identifying the parties, gathering the relevant facts, testing for legal violations, applying the stink test and the front-page test, then choosing among the resolution principles — ends-based, rule-based and care-based reasoning — before deciding and revisiting. Each of those is a branch point with a criterion attached, which is exactly what makes the tree a tree. Show two branches explicitly, including the one you did not take and what would have had to be true to take it, because a tree with a single path is a straight line and the counterfactual branch is what proves the criteria were doing work. Then name which ethical theory you landed on and why that reasoning fit this dilemma rather than being your general preference. A marker reading a wall of prose with no branch points has read a story about a decision instead of the structure the prompt asked for.