Distinguish equality of outcomes from proportional rewards and from a judgment about generosity.
The six Equality items emphasize equal income, equal resources and equal sharing of a collective reward. This MFQ-2 foundation is distinct from Proportionality. Its mean describes endorsement of the offered statements rather than settling every question about fairness.
Use source items 2, 8, 14, 20, 26 and 32, all directly keyed from one to five. Add six valid responses and divide the unrounded sum by six. Any NA withholds this foundation’s personal sum and mean without affecting the other complete groups.
Equal outcomes are the particular topic
In MFQ-2, Equality concerns equal treatment and equal outcomes, and its six final items give substantial attention to income and resource distribution. This is narrower than every possible meaning of fairness. A person may distinguish equal legal standing, equal opportunity, support according to need and identical rewards. These positions can be related without being interchangeable. Read each statement according to its actual wording rather than responding only to the positive sound of equality. The score does not tell you which of those wider principles explains your answer.
More endorsement of equal-outcome statements
A higher mean indicates that the six equal-outcome statements describe your views more closely. It does not prove that you endorse every redistribution proposal or believe that every difference in outcomes is unjust. You may have imagined a particular starting position, a common project or a minimum level of security that the items do not specify. Such assumptions matter to interpretation but are not collected by the response scale. Keep them explicit before connecting a numerical value to a broader account of justice or a real institutional decision.
Less endorsement is not indifference to fairness
A lower mean may reflect more emphasis on contribution, different views about equal income or reservations about making one rule apply to every case. It is not evidence that you favor discrimination, disregard poverty or oppose treating people with respect. Those are different claims from the ones the six items ask you to evaluate. Nor can we infer a person’s financial situation, political affiliation or motives from this value. To understand a low response, identify the condition you questioned rather than assigning a general moral label.
Equality and Proportionality can both matter
The two foundations are not opposite ends of a single slider in this questionnaire. You can endorse some statements in both groups because different situations call different principles to mind. A mean of 3.00 could reflect neutral ratings throughout, strong differences between items or a qualification about how a common reward was earned. It is not automatically a balanced or centrist position. NA remains separate from these valid response patterns. One missing rating withholds Equality’s figures, while the Proportionality group is calculated from its own answers.
Follow the sum before rounding
For a fictional Equality sequence of 2, 4, 3, 1, 2 and 5, the raw sum is seventeen. Dividing seventeen by six gives 2.833333…, displayed as 2.83. The last response is not reversed because it expresses discomfort about income differences; all six items follow the same direct source key. Displaying two decimals helps you reproduce the arithmetic, not measure fairness to hundredths. There is no further conversion to a percentile, percentage of egalitarianism or share of real policies you would support.
One distribution does not define every case
Two fictional teammates might both support sharing a jointly earned award equally while disagreeing about whether incomes should be equal across an entire society. Another respondent may favor equal access to essential resources but rewards that vary with contribution. These examples show why a single broad identity cannot be read from the six-item mean. They also explain why comparing two foundations should preserve the particular statements and contexts. The questionnaire is not a simulation of every distribution problem and supplies no correct allocation for a real dispute.
Clarify which meaning of equal you used
Pick an item and write down what you assumed was being distributed, who contributed and what needs or starting conditions you imagined. Then vary just one assumption in a fictional example. Notice whether your preferred principle changes without treating that change as a failure of consistency. The exercise makes the limits of a broad statement easier to see. You can compare the full Proportionality guide, retain uncertainty or stop here. Nothing in the result directs you toward a political group or a particular public policy.
Source identity and the new translation
This is the six-foundation MFQ-2 with Equality and Proportionality, not the earlier five-foundation MFQ or a six-scale vignette test containing Liberty. English wording is fixed to the authors’ public document under CC BY 4.0, with attribution and source links. FermatMind supplies the working Chinese translation and explanations; new measurement equivalence is not established. The complete-six NA policy is stated separately. There is no global moral score or comparison against an assumed Chinese average, and public guide links never include an individual’s answers or means.