Alexander Astin, co-director of the UCLA study, said "religious commitment" was defined by several criteria, including how important students said spirituality was in their lives, how involved they were in some sort of religious practice, how much spiritual angst they experience, and to what extent they were o­n a spiritual quest.

"Our thinking is that the problem extends to other industries as well," said Meme Drumwright, chair of the bridging disciplines program in ethics and leadership at the University of Texas at Austin.

Drumwright, associate professor of advertising at UT, and Patrick Murphy, a marketing professor at the University of Notre Dame, interviewed more than 50 advertising practitioners at 29 agencies in eight cities to discover how they perceive ethical issues.