Read a principle about proportional rewards without mistaking a score for proof of merit.
These six items concern rewarding work, recognizing merit and responding to cheating. They describe a particular account of fairness based on contribution. The mean neither measures your productivity nor establishes what anyone deserves in an actual allocation.
Source items 3, 9, 15, 21, 27 and 33 are directly keyed. Average all six valid one-to-five describes-me responses using the unrounded sum. The fixed English document has a known wording difference at item 27 compared with the preprint appendix; this edition follows the document.
A contribution-based meaning of fairness
The source defines Proportionality through intuitions about rewards tracking merit or contribution. Its final items mention hard work, effort reflected in a raise, recognition and punishment of cheating. Those examples are not identical: effort, achievement and compliance with rules can come apart. Someone may work very hard under conditions that limit visible output, while another may achieve more with advantages not described in a question. Your responses concern the offered principles; the scale does not measure contributions or establish the facts needed to apply them.
A relatively higher mean
A higher mean indicates closer identification with these statements about proportional rewards and recognition. It does not establish opposition to every equal distribution or every form of help based on need. You may distinguish rewards for a shared achievement from essential resources, or think that assessing contribution requires fair conditions. Such qualifications can coexist with strong ratings here. The program does not remove them by assigning one political or economic identity. Keep the six separate answers available when a general summary seems broader than the view you intended to express.
A relatively lower mean
A lower mean indicates less endorsement of this particular collection of propositions. It does not demonstrate laziness, approval of cheating or a wish to take rewards from others. A respondent might worry about how merit is measured, emphasize a different distribution principle, or reject a strong statement about who should become richer. The summary cannot tell which explanation applies. In particular, disliking one form of punishment is not the same claim as approving the conduct being punished. Interpretation needs the item and the reason for the response, not just the mean.
Keep separate principles and uncertainty visible
MFQ-2 reports Equality and Proportionality separately rather than subtracting one from the other. You can endorse a contribution-based reward in one context and equal sharing in another. A middle mean can also conceal strong agreement about recognizing effort but reservations about income or punishment. We do not call that pattern a contradiction. NA provides a separate way to retain an unanswered qualification or decline an item. Under this presentation’s complete-six rule, that group’s personal figures are withheld; the other foundations are not used to guess the missing response.
Check the 23-point sequence
Imagine the six ratings are 5, 4, 3, 4, 2 and 5. Adding them gives twenty-three; 23 divided by 6 is 3.833333…, displayed as 3.83. All six use the direct key, including the final statement about cheaters being caught and punished. Do not reverse an item merely because its wording concerns something negative. If one selection becomes NA, the personal sum and mean are withheld here rather than calculating a five-item substitute. Decimal display is arithmetic convenience, not a claim of psychological precision.
A high value cannot establish who contributed more
Two fictional colleagues can both favor contribution-based rewards and still disagree about who contributed to a joint project. One may count visible output, while the other includes coordination, care work or risks that were less visible. Their questionnaire means cannot settle that factual or conceptual dispute. Conversely, choosing an equal split in that project does not automatically invalidate a person’s general endorsement of recognizing effort. The scale is a description of self-reported principles, not a tool for deciding pay, evaluating employees or certifying the fairness of a real organization.
Specify what you meant by contribution
Choose an item and write a fictional example where its principle seems useful. Identify whether you mean effort, results, responsibility or rule-following, then change one of those conditions. Notice which change affects your judgment. This exercise can make a broad principle clearer without prescribing an allocation or asking you to persuade anyone. Read the full Equality guide if the distinction between identical outcomes and proportional rewards matters to you. You can retain both concerns or leave a question open; no most-consistent moral profile is required.
The exact edition matters
The English bank is pinned to the authors’ public MFQ-2 document under CC BY 4.0. Item 27 in that file speaks of harder-working people ending up richer than others; the preprint uses different wording about higher living standards. The source bytes and difference are recorded rather than silently blended. Chinese is a FermatMind working translation, not an officially validated equivalent. Attribution, licence and changes are visible. No total moral score, party prediction or assumed population ranking follows from this presentation, and public links contain no private answer data.