IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016 - 57

exclusion criteria for participation in this study and no
compensation was offered to participants in the study.
The time frame for survey completion was 10 months.
Participants were required to indicate their response
on a Likert-type scale with 5 points: 1- strongly disagree,
2- disagree, 3- nor agree nor disagree, 4- agree, and
5- strongly agree.
The initial version of the scale was developed in English. The translation to Romanian and Dutch was done
by the authors of the paper, native speakers of the two
languages.
The survey was completed on-line for the majority of
the respondents. For 143 Romanian participants, the
survey was completed in paper-and-pencil format. These
participants were either students, or were parents or professionals working in centers for autism intervention.
For the online version of the survey, the free and
open source online survey application LimeSurvey was
used. The application was installed on the VUB webserver and available in three languages: English, Romanian, and Dutch. Since robots exist in different shapes
for a wide range of applications, but in our survey we
focus on social robots, we introduced a one-minute
video presenting several social robots that the respondents were required to view before completing the survey. The video contained short clips of a selection of
social robots representing a large variety of physical
designs. These varied physical designs included
robots that possess anthropomorphic features [26],
humanoid robots [16], robots that are designed as animals [18], robots that have cartoon-like features [15],
[19], or robots that are not designed to resemble any
biological species [3] (see Fig. 1). No children were
shown in the video. Moreover, in the video, a neutral
voice narration using lay terminology was used: http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSklqn49gD8. (Video
used here with creator's permission.)

Pleo-Innvo Lab

RomiboOrigami
Robotics
Shick, 2013

NaoAldebaran
Robotics
Gouaillier et
al, 2009

Participants
A total of 416 subjects agreed to participate in the survey. Data from 22 participants who completed only
demographic data was excluded. All other outputs, even
if incomplete, were included in the analysis. The demographic data of the remaining 394 participants indicated that 82.19% were female and 17.81% were male (see
Fig. 2(a)). Age range of the participants was between 16
and 64 years old (M = 29.86 years, Sd = 11.54). The
distribution of the responses indicates a predominance
of younger participants in the sample (see Fig. 2(e)). As
for the education, the data analysis indicates a high
proportion of participants (87.52%) with higher education (see Fig. 2(c)). The nationality analysis indicates
that 63.96% of the participants are Romanian (M =
24.38, Sd = 7.06), 18.53% are Belgian (M = 40.02, Sd =
12.20), 14.72% are Dutch (M = 39.46, Sd = 10.78), and
2.79% have other nationality (see Fig. 2(b)). Parents of
children with an autism spectrum disorder constituted
22.59% of the participants, and 16.75% of the participants were therapists or teachers of children with
autism spectrum disorder (see Fig. 2(d)).

Data Analysis
The data were quantitatively analyzed with the Statistical
Program for Social Sciences (IBM SPSS Statistics 20).

Analysis of Components
After the initial elaboration of an extended pool of items,
preliminary analysis retained 12 items for data collection. Principal components analysis (PCA) was carried
out including the 12 items of the Ethical Acceptability
Scale. The analysis using Varimax rotations revealed
three factors with eigenvalues of 5.33, 1.25, and 1.20,
accounting for 64.95% of the total variance. Factor I was
termed Ethical Acceptability for Use and it accounted
for 44.47% of variance. Factor II was termed Ethical

Probo-Vrije
Universiteit
Brussel
Goris et al,
2011

Kaspar-University
of Herdfortshire
Dautenhahn et al,
2009

Keepon
-NICT
Kozima et
al., 2009

IROMEC
-Ferrari,
Robins,
Dautenhahn,
2009

Figure 1. The robots presented in the video.

june 2016

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IEEE TEchnology and SocIETy MagazInE

http://http:// http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSklqn49gD8

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