Measure Of Moral Reasoning Research Articles

Measuring morality: Analyzing the factor structure of the moral foundations questionnaire in veterans.

Moral reasoning is an underexamined and potentially useful area of research relative to the care of moral injury in veterans. However, the most widely used measure of moral reasoning, the moral foundations questionnaire (MFQ), has not been validated in this population. Post-9/11 veterans (N = 311) completed questionnaires which included the MFQ. Veterans' scores were compared to the general USpopulation. Confirmatory factor analysiswas used to test existing models of the MFQ in the sample. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was also used to examine potentially improved model fits. The two leading, preexisting MFQ models were both poor fits for the data. EFA results produced a four-factor model for the veteran sample using 25 of the original 30 items of the MFQ. Measuring moral reasoning among veterans may be important in understanding the experience of moral injury. However, the most widely used scale (MFQ) performs poorly among a sample of post-9/11 veterans, indicating that veterans may respond differently to the measure than the general USpopulation. Military culture may uniquely influence veterans' moral reasoning, suggesting the need for military specific measures for this construct.

The Interplay Between Absolute Language and Moral Reasoning on Endorsement of Moral Foundations.

Morality – the subjective sense that humans discern between right and wrong – plays a ubiquitous role in everyday life. Deontological reasoning conceptualizes moral decision-making as rigid, such that many moral choices are forbidden or required. Not surprisingly, the language used in measures of deontological reasoning tends to be rigid, including phrases such as “always” and “never.” Two studies (N = 553) drawn from two different populations used commonly used measures of moral reasoning and measures of morality to examine the link between individual differences in deontological reasoning and language on the endorsement of moral foundations. Participants low on deontological reasoning generally showed less endorsement for moral principles when extreme language was used in the measures (relative to less extreme language).

Beyond cognitive measures: Empirical evidence supporting holistic medical school admissions practices and professional identity formation.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Background: Medical schools seek admissions methods that identify applicants who hold promise to become physicians who will navigate and shape the future medical landscape. The focus on traditional cognitive measures for admission has prompted calls for holistic admissions review during the past five years. Yet, empirical evidence linking selection measures to holistic admissions practices has not been fully established, including their relationship with professional identity formation over time. A non-cognitive admissions situational judgment screening test (CASPer) measuring personal and professional characteristics was added to the University of Illinois College of Medicine admissions process two years ago, as we implemented a new curriculum that emphasizes professional identity development. Purpose: This study examined associations among admissions measures (Medical College Admission Test [MCAT], grade point average [GPA], interview, and CASPer), and their predictive relationships with curricular measures of professional identity formation (Professional Identity Essay [PIE]) and moral reasoning (Defining Issues Test [DIT2]). Methods: Data were taken from two entering cohorts ( n = 596; entering class of 2017 and 2018 across 3 regional sites). Correlations and regression analyses were used to examine associations between admissions and professional identity measures. Results: CASPer and in-person admissions interview ratings had significant positive correlations, suggesting that CASPer can contribute to effective screening processes. In addition, CASPer demonstrated statistically significant positive relationships with professional identity (CASPer and PIE, r=.10, p<.05) and a measure of moral reasoning (CASPer and DIT2 type indicator, r=.09, p<.05). Association between CASPer and PIE remained consistent, even after controlling for MCAT, interview, and GPA. Conclusion: Our institutional focus on professional identity formation has provided new ways to conceptualize students' readiness for medical school - demonstrated academic rigor as well as signs of professionalism, ethics, and motivation. Non-academic factors measured in situational judgment tests may promote better alignment of admissions practices and desired educational outcomes.

Visual Encoding of Social Cues Contributes to Moral Reasoning in Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Eye-Tracking Study.

Eye-tracking studies suggest that visual encoding is important for social processes such as socio-moral reasoning. Alterations to the visual encoding of faces, for example, have been linked to the social phenotype of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and are associated with social and communication impairments. Yet, people with ASD often perform similarly to neurotypical participants on measures of moral reasoning, supporting the hypothesis of differential mechanisms of moral reasoning in ASD. The objective of this study was to document visual encoding and moral reasoning in ASD and neurotypical individuals using a visual, ecological, sociomoral reasoning paradigm paired with eye-tracking. Two groups (ASD, Control) matched for age and IQ completed the SoMoral task, a set of picture situations describing everyday moral dilemmas, while their eye movements and pupil dilation were recorded. Moral understanding, decision-making, and justification were recorded. Participants with ASD presented a longer time to first fixation on faces. They also understood fewer dilemmas and produced fewer socially adaptive responses. Despite a similar average level of moral maturity, the justifications produced by participants with ASD were not distributed in the same way as the neurotypical participants. Visual encoding was a significant predictor of moral decision-making and moral justification for both groups. The results are discussed in the context of alternative mechanisms of moral reasoning in ASD.

Assessing social cognition: age-related changes in moral reasoning in childhood and adolescence

Objective: There is increasing recognition that socio-cognitive skills, such as moral reasoning (MR), are affected in a wide range of developmental and neuropsychological conditions. However, the lack of appropriate measures available to neuropsychologists poses a challenge for the direct assessment of these skills. This study sought to explore age-related changes in MR using an innovative visual tool and examine the developmental sensitivity of the task. Method: To address some of the methodological limitations of traditional measures of MR, a novel, visual task, the Socio-Moral Reasoning Aptitude Level (So-Moral), was used to evaluate MR in 216 healthy participants aged 6–20 years. Results: The findings show a linear increase in MR from childhood to late adolescence with significant group differences between childhood (6–8 years) and preadolescence (9–11 years), and between early adolescence (12–14 years) and middle adolescence (15–17 years). Conclusions: Interpreted in light of current brain development research, the results highlight age-related changes in MR that offer insight into typical MR development and opportunities for comparisons with clinical populations. The findings also provide evidence of the potential of the So-Moral as a developmentally appropriate measure of MR throughout childhood and adolescence.

Moral Reasoning and Its Connections With Machiavellianism and Authoritarianism: The Critical Roles of Index Choice and Utilization

Moral reasoning typically relates unexpectedly weakly with both Machiavellianism and authoritarianism. Although researchers often explain this by pointing to apparent shortcomings in both the construct and the measure of moral reasoning, such explanations are questionable given the many instances of support for hypotheses involving moral reasoning using the same construct and measure. As these latter cannot only sometimes be flawed, we explored the possible influence of moral reasoning index choice on observed results by using multiple indices available in the Defining Issues Test (DIT). In a sample of 201 employed persons surveyed in 1998, with results reported for the first time, advanced moral reasoners tended to be neither Machiavellian nor authoritarian. However, the specific moral reasoning index employed was critical to detecting these hypothesized inverse relationships. Specifically, we proposed (and determined) that currently unavailable D scores would be the relevant index for examining inverse relationships with Machiavellianism and that P scores would be most appropriate in the context of inverse relationships with authoritarianism, particularly among persons inclined to utilize their characteristic moral reasoning (assessed with U scores). We extrapolate the conceptual logic underpinning such relationships, and suggest that appropriate index choice flows from this logic and is essential to hypothesis testing across a broad array of constructs. Future research could adopt this logic to examine relationships involving constructs with implications similar to those found in Machiavellianism and authoritarianism.

Irish student teachers’ levels of moral reasoning: context, comparisons, and contributing influences

The moral role of the teacher has long been recognised and this has implications for the selection and education of student teachers. There is growing recognition of the importance of teachers’ capacity to make sound moral judgements and of the influence of teachers’ levels of moral reasoning on their professional practice. The paper presents the findings of a longitudinal study of 102 undergraduate student teachers who completed the DIT 2 measure of moral reasoning, at the beginning, mid-point and end of their four-year degree programme at an Irish university. While these students’ levels of moral reasoning were found to be higher than those of their international peers, more than half of graduating students were reasoning at the conventional level as defined by Kohlberg. These findings are located in the context of Irish education policy and practice. Some possible explanations for the students’ performance are suggested and discussed including their entry characteristics, the status of the teaching profession in Ireland, the nature of their teacher education programme and participation in the Transition Year option.

Arrested Development? Comparing Educational Leadership Students With National Norms on Moral Reasoning

Purpose: The public expects school leaders to be moral exemplars, yet prior research indicates that teachers and, more recently, school principals may score lower than other career groups on a widely used measure of moral reasoning, the Defining Issues Test. Moreover, little empirical research has been conducted on educators during leadership preparation in graduate school. The purpose of this research was to create a baseline profile for moral reasoning in educational leadership/administration graduate students in one Southern state and to compare their scores with a composite national average for graduate students across disciplines to see if educational interventions are needed. Research Design: In the summer of 2012, the updated Defining Issues Test–2 was offered via e-mail as an online questionnaire to 539 master’s, educational specialist, and doctoral students in the five advanced-track schools in the study state. The questionnaire also gathered data on the students’ demographics and the virtual test-taking environment. Findings: Complete data for 113 respondents (a 21% response rate) show that the educational leadership/administration graduate students prefer a maintaining norms schema when solving moral problems. In fact, participants scored significantly lower ( M = 30) on postconventional (advanced) moral thinking than the national norm for graduate students across disciplines ( M = 41) and a historical average for graduate students ( M = 53) on the Defining Issues Test. Conclusions: Researchers urge evidenced-based educational interventions for this group—specifically, Rest’s four-component model, which addresses all four moral psychological processes: sensitivity, judgment, motivation, and character. They also recommend beginning ethics instruction with professional identity development. Classification: This is an empirical study.

The development of prosocial moral reasoning and a prosocial orientation in young adulthood: Concurrent and longitudinal correlates.

We examined stability and change in prosocial moral reasoning (PRM) assessed longitudinally at ages 20/21, 22/23, 24/25, 26/27, and 31/32 years (N = 32; 16 female) using a pencil-and-paper measure of moral reasoning and examined relations of PRM and prosocial behavior with one another and with empathy, sympathy measured with self- and friend reports in adulthood, self- and mother reports of prosocial tendencies in adolescence, and observed prosocial behavior in preschool. Proportions of different types of PRM (hedonistic, approval, stereotypic, internalized) exhibited high mean-level stability across early adulthood, although stereotypic PMR increased with age and hedonistic PRM (a less sophisticated type of PRM) declined over time for males. More sophisticated PMR was positively related to friends' reports of a prosocial orientation concurrently and at age 24/25, as well as self-reports of sympathy in adolescence. Specific modes of PMR related to spontaneous or compliant sharing in preschool. Women used more sophisticated PMR than men across the entire study period. Self-reported and friend-reported prosociality at age 27/28 and 31/32 (combined) was related to numerous prior measures of a prosocial orientation, including spontaneous, relatively costly prosocial behavior in preschool (for self-reports and friend-reported sympathy/consideration for others). Donating/volunteering at T13/T14 was related to concurrent self- and friend-reported prosociality and to self-reported prosocial orientation in earlier adulthood and mother-reported helping in adolescence.

Are Past Normative Behaviors Predictive of Future Behavioral Intentions?

We acknowledge the limitations in measures of moral reasoning and pursue an alternative technique by investigating past behaviors as they relate to present behavioral intentions. Our purpose is to evaluate the merits of patterned normative behavior for predicting present and future, morally relevant outcomes. Participants (N = 177) completed a policy capturing experimental design responding to questions that orthogonally varied the situational nature of the decision context. Results indicate that past normative behaviors are significantly and directly related to ethical behavioral intentions. Moreover, they moderate the relationships between situational factors and intended outcomes as well as moral reasoning and intended outcomes.

Using Structural Equation Modeling to Validate the Theory of Planned Behavior as a Model for Predicting Student Cheating

The purpose of this paper is to validate the use of a modified Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) for predicting undergraduate student cheating. Specifically, we administered a survey assessing how the TPB relates to cheating along with a measure of moral reasoning (DIT- 2) to 527 undergraduate students across three institutions; and analyzed the data using structural equation modeling. Results confirmed using the modified TPB as a model for predicting student cheating and the importance of understanding how cheating varies for students in different periods of moral reasoning development, namely moral consolidation and moral transition.

Some Notes on the Relation of Moral Reasoning and Personality

This article offers a critical review of various accepted premises of and persuasive interpretations on whether moral reasoning and personality traits are related. Purposely, this study draws on recent critical examination by Mudrack questioning the paucity of research on the efficacy of a long-established measure of moral reasoning, i.e., Defining Issues Test, together with its relations with basic personality variables of the California Psychological Inventory. Some observations are noted about the validity of tasks that measure personality traits and magnitude of the relation to moral reasoning.

Comparing the Stewart-Sprinthall Management Survey and the Defining Issues Test-2 as Measures of Moral Reasoning in Public Administration

Studies of moral reasoning in public administration have used James Rest's Defining Issues Test (DIT) and the Stewart-Sprinthall Management Survey (SSMS), both derived from Lawrence Kohlberg's work, to assess the moral reasoning of government managers and personnel with disparate results. For example, in previous research with public administrators the SSMS has found higher levels of law and order or maintaining norms moral reasoning than the DIT. The purposes of this article are to (1) summarize the results of published research in public administration using the SSMS and the DIT, (2) compare the results of the SSMS and DIT in the same sample of public administrators, and (3) make recommendations for the use of these instruments in research and practice. In a sample of members of the American Society for Public Administration's Section on Ethics, a comparison of DIT-2 and SSMS moral reasoning scores demonstrated no significant differences between postconventional moral reasoning scores; however, there was a significant difference between maintaining norms percentage scores. This suggests that the two instruments may tap into different dimensions of moral reasoning. Liberals and moderates scored significantly higher than conservatives did in postconventional reasoning on the DIT-2 but not on the SSMS. These results support findings of previous research demonstrating the political dimensions of the DIT, as well as reinforce the multidimensional nature of moral behavior and moral judgment. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for the use of both instruments.

Social justice and moral reasoning: An empirical integration of two paradigms in psychological research

Distributive and procedural justice are of central importance to past and current theories of the psychology of moral development and the social psychology of justice. In order to explicate the relationships among theories, participants responded to both a measure of moral reasoning and a measure of 15 various justice criteria. Analyses showed that each schema of moral reasoning was significantly predicted by different concerns about social justice. Furthermore, individuals' judgments about justice were best represented by four factors, offering a broader definition of justice in relation to moral schemas. The findings were consistent with Kohlbergian theory; moral reasoning appears to proceed from concerns about self-interest to distributive fairness to procedural justice.

Personality, Personal Epistemology, and Moral Judgment

The relations among personality traits, moral judgment, and personal epistemology were investigated. The relationship between personality and moral judgments is empirically unclear, which may reflect that personal epistemology mediates the relationships between personality and moral reasoning. In the present study 41 men and 57 women, ranging in age from 18 to 46 yr. responded to Zuckerman's Sensation Seeking Scale, Form V, a measure of moral reasoning or Rest's Defining Issues Test, and a measure of persona] epistemology by Unger, Draper, and Pendergrass, the Attitudes About Reality scale. The pattern of inter-correlation among measures differed for men and women. For women an epistemology based on assumptions of logical positivism was negatively correlated with sensation seeking. For men an epistemology based on assumptions of logical positivism was negatively correlated with principled moral reasoning. Implications of these results are discussed.

PERSONALITY, PERSONAL EPISTEMOLOGY, AND MORAL JUDGMENT

The relations among personality traits, moral judgment, and personal epistemology were investigated. The relationship between personality and moral judgments is empirically unclear, which may reflect that personal epistemology mediates the relationships between personality and moral reasoning. In the present study 41 men and 57 women, ranging in age from 18 to 46 yr. responded to Zuckerman's Sensation Seeking Scale, Form V, a measure of moral reasoning or Rest's Defining Issues Test, and a measure of persona] epistemology by Unger, Draper, and Pendergrass, the Attitudes About Reality scale. The pattern of inter-correlation among measures differed for men and women. For women an epistemology based on assumptions of logical positivism was negatively correlated with sensation seeking. For men an epistemology based on assumptions of logical positivism was negatively correlated with principled moral reasoning. Implications of these results are discussed.

Measuring Nurses' Moral Judgments

Studies of the moral reasoning of nurses yield inconsistent findings. Using Cronbach and Meehl's interpretive framework, the author demonstrates the lack of construct validity for Kohlberg's theory of moral development and related measures of moral reasoning. Gilligan's relational theory of moral orientations is proposed as an alternative theory worth testing in nurse samples.

Moral Reasoning in College Students: Implications for Nursing Education

The purpose of this study was to investigate the moral reasoning levels of undergraduate students, freshman through senior (N = 266), in a liberal arts college. Three groups of students, two liberal arts, and one nursing participated in the study. All three groups had enrolled in one of two general education curricular tracks. Two of the groups, one liberal arts and one nursing, were enrolled in a traditional general education curriculum; the third group enrolled in an integrated general education curriculum which used decision-making as an organizational structure. Moral reasoning levels were determined for the three groups via Rest's Defining Issues Test. Results revealed the liberal arts students in the integrated curriculum had significantly higher moral reasoning levels than those in the traditional curriculum. The nursing students were intermediate in moral reasoning levels to the two liberal arts groups. These results suggest that baccalaureate nursing educators should consider an approach similar to the integrated curriculum with a decision-making organizational structure to facilitate students' moral reasoning development. Regardless of their area of clinical practice, today's professional nurses are increasingly confronted with ethical dilemmas and often required to make moral/ethical decisions. Nurses who reason at a high moral or ethical level are assumed to practice by a code of moral principles and thus more likely to make decisions which value others and respect their rights and dignity (Felton & Parsons, 1987). In response to this relatively complex dimension in nursing practice, nursing educators have begun to discuss how best to prepare the nursing student to make these high-level ethical decisions.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Construction and Validation of a Multiple-Choice Measure of Moral Reasoning

Construction and Validation of a Multiple-Choice Measure of Moral Reasoning

Normative ethics of two categories of offenders.

Previous research has established that various measures of moral reasoning and axiological orientation are capable of differentiating criminal from noncriminal populations and between probationers convicted of various types of offenses. Traditional personality measures (such as the MMPI), by comparison, do not seem to discriminate so reliably. In the present study a new measure of moral reasoning, the Moral Content Components Test, was explored as a possible aid for the classification of probationers requiring different degrees of supervision. Two scales reliably distinguished probationers requiring regular or intensive supervision. It was concluded that the test has potential as an aid to probationary classification.