As a helping/service profession, an athletic trainer's mission is to enhance the quality of care, prevention, and rehabilitation of athletes' athletic injuries. Typically service professions, because of the inherent nature of caring for others, generally use a more principled level of moral reasoning. Much research has examined moral reasoning with competitive populations and lately some on social values, the relative worth that an individual places on issues of loyalty, hard work, dedication, and sacrifice. Researchers have found that moral reasoning of competitive populations is truncated whereas social reasoning is elevated. Apparently the competitive process hinders moral reasoning while competition appears to support and develop social values. Little research has evaluated the moral reasoning and social reasoning process of athletic trainers as members of a competitive arena. The purpose of this study was to examine the moral reasoning and social reasoning of certified and student athletic trainers. Subjects were 21 randomly selected certified and 13 student athletic trainers (15 females and 19 males). IRB approval was granted and all signed letters of informed consent. Participants took the RSBH Values inventory (a valid and reliable tool for measuring moral and social reasoning, Chronbach Alphas ranging from .77 - .88 moral side and .71-.76 social side). The two part instrument measures moral reasoning and social reasoning. MANOVA and ANOVA techniques were used (p<.05). A significant difference was found by gender, Wilk's Lambda (F[2, 29]=4.20, p<.025). ANOVA procedures found a significant difference on the social side (F[1, 30]=3.946, p<.05) and moral side (F [1, 30]=8.69, p<.006). Females scored (M=38.73 + 1.12) significantly higher than males (M=34.87 + 1.58) on the social side and moral side: females (M=27.36 + 1.46) males (M=19.91 + 2.05). A significant difference was not found between certified and student athletic trainers, Wilk's Lambda (F[2, 29]=1.80, p<.182). Both certified and student trainers use higher levels of social reasoning compared to moral reasoning. Decisions appear to be made using the social values of dedication, loyalty, and sacrifice as compared to honesty, responsibility, and justice, which could impact decisions made about athlete care. Perhaps the competitive process may be impacting the ability to use principles to reason morally and thus masking the effect of being a helping profession or athletic training programs should move from a compliance to rules ethic to one of learning a moral reasoning process to make good decisions. Keyword(s): athletics/sports, medical/medical care, standards and ethics