Moral judgment competence on a sample of Serbian adolescents

Abstract

Main goal of the present study is going to be examination of the level of expression of moral judgement competence on a sample of adolescents from Serbia, and also the examination of possible gender and age differences in the level of expression of this competence. For this purpose, a sample of 183 participants, of both genders, grammar school, and psychology students from Niš, Serbia, are asked to complete the Serbian version of the Moral Judgement Test (MJT), authored by Georg Lind. MJT was adapted into Serbian from English by using the method of backtranslation. Test validation was, as per recommandations of the author of the test, conducted through a study of internal structure. In the course of this study, relations between measures of preference of stages of moral development was compared to theoretical quasisimplex structure, and also mean values for the preference of various stages were compared with theoretical expectations. This study yielded results supporting the validity of this Serbian version of MJT. For interpreting level of expression of moral judgement competence, C scores are going to be calculated and interpreted according to reccommendations for interpretation of C scores provided by the author of MJT. Relative to the level of expression of moral judgement competence, mean results of our sample lie at the border between average and high moral judgement competence expression levels. Results did not show the existence of any gender or age differences in mean levels of expression of competence for moral judgement.